Tag: music

Source of Bounty

Inside my thoughts, as in most of us in one form or another, live creatures who never see the light of day.

They live under rocks, inside volcano tubes, under the ocean, beneath the stairs, inside wheel wells, hidden in clothes dryer vents, sleeping in pocket lint and earwax, always just out of sight but feeding the imagination of weary travelers, scared children and isolated elderly.

The most sensitive of us are as close to companions for these creatures who know neither goodness nor malice as can be expected for these creatures live for themselves only, unaware of anything or anyone else in the universe.

No story I can tell will stop the creatures from existing, will not prevent their benefiting us or hindering us.

Yet we will live with them anyway.

Regardless of how well we know them (or think we do), their behaviour never ceases to amaze us when they contradict all we expect of them or when we feel we can predict their next move.

Their influence upon us varies with ocean tides, stock market swings and parliamentary elections.

In the same moment, they may inadvertently encourage us to help a little old lady push a grocery buggy through a supermarket and shove out of the way a kind, young parent caring for two children whilst shopping on a stretched budget.

The creatures use every means available for transport and reproduction. To them, we look like mere transport media, temporary waystations. To them, we look like feeding stations and baby creature crèches/nurseries.

The creatures have no heart, no soul, no introspection, no remorse.

Some of us feel the creatures cause chills curdling our insides.

Some of us die before realising what the creatures have done to us.

We may drop $5 in a tip jar to help a cashier make a living wage.

Or drink a $75 shot of Octomore to our health.

We may praise Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren in the same breath and equal proportions but vote the Green Party during the national presidential election.

We may know global warming is a real concern, unable to discern to what extent our species contributes to the planet’s rising heat, yet not worry whether or how much we reduce/reuse/recycle.

The creatures care nothing about our concerns, do not laugh with us, vote with us, cry with us, think with us.

However, everything we do happens because of them.

They kill without mercy.

They feed upon both the weak and the strong.

We drink, breathe and eat them without hesitating.

The hairs on our arms are covered with them.

The liquid film on our eyeballs is filled with them.

The neurochemical processes we call thoughts are accelerated and slowed down by them.

Sure, amongst us are fellow humans so foul, so seemingly intent upon our suffering and destruction that we can think of nothing more but to call them evil, even if what they do is heavenly in comparison to the creatures.

They, like the kindest and most generous amongst us, are here because of the creatures.

The creatures have no beginning and no end, no inside or outside, living nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

If we can do nothing about them, then no story with a setup, conflict, climax, conclusion and moral can include them.

We cannot escape them, cannot rid the universe of them, cannot hide from them.

Their existence ties us all together, our deepest, hidden thoughts available for all the world to see, our best and worst moments meshed into one.

We prosper and perish because of them but no award show will give credit to the creatures, no billionaire will praise them, no destitute person condemn them.

The worst horror story we can tell will not include them.

The best religious experience will not exalt them.

Yet there they are, in the morning frost…

…and a chalkboard advert…

A place called home

We travelers — a group of four — enjoy the warmth and hospitality of random travelers as well as those who host us when we’re eating or preparing to sleep.

Our accommodations are modest, neither luxurious nor bare.

In our travels, we suffer no inconvenience that prevents us from our pedestrian pleasures of food, shelter, clothing, shopping and sightseeing.

Our views are close as well as wide, a covered outdoor gas grille juxtaposing the Stanley Hotel, high mountains surrounding us in all directions, for example.

So it was I found myself yesterday preparing to pack our rental SUV and heard the honk of a loud truck horn across the street.

A Manitou Springs sanitation crew was waiting for homeowners up the hill from us to haul down two flights of red-and-brown stone stairs their garbage in white plastic bags.

The sanitation truck driver saw me and held out his forefinger, indicating he’d be over to my place in a moment.

I looked in the driveway of our rental cottage and found three rubbish bins, one a bit older and away from the other two newer bins.

As the sanitation truck stopped at the cabin, I quickly rolled the bins to the two guys dumping the trash at the back of the truck.

When the sanitation crew leader grabbed the older bin from me, he peered inside and gave me a questioning look.

He tipped the bin in my location. Inside the bin were a few small plastic shopping bags; old, tattered clothes; and ripped, weathered shoes.

I shrugged my shoulders to indicate they weren’t mine so the crew leader went ahead and dumped the contents of the bin into the truck.

Later, I noticed a very thin homeless guy walk by our cabin, then slow down to look in the direction of where the older bin had been. He was wearing a T-shirt covered in mud stains, a pair of barely held together, excessively-shredded blue jeans and a pair of flattened flip-flops, his long hair tangled in knots and pointing in all directions. Either he just returned from an outdoor music festival or lived along the creek like the fellows I’d seen whilst fishing earlier in the week.

I wonder: was the homeless guy and perhaps others using the older bin as a relatively dry, animal-free storage locker for their clothes and belongings, maybe even food?

Some say home is where the heart is.

Home can also be where you have a place to store your belongings, no matter how insecure, no matter how temporarily, just like the wanderers and fortune seekers who’ve hiked these hills for millennia.

Sout’s

Sitting in an English pub across the street from the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs whilst drinking Redbreast whiskey brings make memories of watching Munster rugby matches at Sout’s (W.J. South’s pub) in Limerick, Ireland.

Nothing like a wee dram before singing off-key in a pub!

How the years pass by quicker and quicklier but the memories remain…

Sláinte!

BTW, if in Old Colorado City try the Tapateria, especially on Art Walk night.

For Whom the Bells Toll

I admit I don’t always get pop culture humour.

For instance, not too many years ago a comedy sketch appeared on Saturday Night Live about cowbells that has proven itself popular through the years…a/k/a

“More cowbell”

I never understood the joke.

Now, however much I tried in the past, now I get the joke, but only after seeing this Shecky Greene routine on the Glen Campbell show…

Need more bells for the singing of “Jingle Bells”

200 years later…

Two hundred years after my ancestor explored the hills, rivers and valleys of East Tennessee, including a spot where Big Creek meets the Holston River not far from where my wife grew up, and on Long Island in Kingsport not far from where I grew up, I worked at my first job, a cashier/short order cook for McLendy’s, a fast food restaurant in downtown Kingsport in a building now home to a CPA and travel agency…

My childhood was rather sheltered culturally.

The vast majority of people I knew and met on a daily basis were WASPs. One exception — my first and second grade school years where my best friend, Kevin, was African-American and fell in love with my sister.

From 3rd grade (age 8) until 10th grade (age 16), I only knew a few Jewish friends and two Hispanic friends who were not WASPs.

In 10th grade, I turned 16 and, with my father’s help, purchased my first car, a gold Dodge Dart. To help pay for the car, I started working at a “real” job because my lawn mowing business didn’t bring in enough income for car expenses — monthly car payment, gas/oil and insurance (the last of which my father paid).

I question whether a fast food entry-level position is real work but for a suburbanite living in the Tennessee foothills it counted because I had official training, wore a uniform and had to punch a time clock to record my work hours.

McLendy’s exposed me to the “big city” life, or so I thought, basically because I was surrounded with people who were not my high school mates.

One workmate was an older guy (probably 30 years old) who had spent 10 years in the U.S. Army as a bazooka specialist who could not find a civilian job that took advantage of his unique skills handling a shoulder-fired weapon. He constantly complained about the lack of civilian support for a person like him which the U.S. Government had invested thousands of dollars training for war. He advised me to be careful if I decided on a military career and get an assignment (MOS) which had useful civilian skills like office clerk or driver.

Another workmate was about my age — Greg Watterson.

Have I told you about him? He was the first African-American person I got to know as an adult.

Yeah, my life was pretty sheltered culturally.

Greg was surprised I held no bias against him and I didn’t know why.

I didn’t know about ethnic cliques or subcultural biases except remotely through the evening news.

Greg was shocked I knew nothing about him because he knew a little bit about me.

By the time I started at McLendy’s I had shown an interest in acting, having participated in my high school’s performance of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Other of my fellow actors/high school mates had made friends with actors in our rival high school in Kingsport, Dobyns-Bennett.

One such actor was Justin Faire whose nickname was Justin Fairy.

At age 16 I understood there were boys/men who showed effeminate traits but I didn’t understand that effeminate boys/men are usually homosexuals.

Justin was (and from I’ve seen on Facebook still is) very effeminate.

So was Greg.

Greg was shocked that not only did I show no animosity toward him as an African-American but also no animosity toward him as an effeminate man.

At first he thought it was probably because I knew his father was important, a local business owner on the city council.

Surely, Greg asked, I had seen his father’s business, a famous liquor store in town?

Nope, my parents weren’t big drinkers.

Sure, Greg asked, I had heard about his father’s comments in city council meetings?

Nope, my father was opposed to us watching TV news and because I didn’t live in the city of Kingsport I didn’t pay attention to Kingsport-related news articles in the Kingsport newspaper.

So, Greg concluded, I didn’t show respect for Greg because of his father.

Nope, Greg had my respect for him because he was a person, not because of someone or something else.

Greg told me he was close friends with several of my classmate, including Justin Faire and Jeff Fleischer, if I knew what Greg meant.

Greg laughed when it was obvious I didn’t get what he was talking about.

At that point in my life, I had not yet kissed a girl, I mean really kiss a girl (not counting the boy/girl party in 5th grade when, at age 10, I had to go in a basement closet with a girl, Renee Wells (who later was pregnant at age 14) to kiss her after a “spin the bottle” game put us two together); or the time I pressed my lips to a friend, Patricia, when we were nine years old to see what kissing was all about.

Therefore, I certainly didn’t know or understand why two guys would want to kiss each other or anything else that has to do with homosexual activity — it just wasn’t a part of my upbringing — something that Greg had shared with his friends Justin and Jeff.

Greg said that he knew about me already even though I didn’t know about him.

I couldn’t see how.

Greg said that I had been a really nice friend to his friends Justin and Jeff and they had mentioned my name to Greg.

Ummm…what?

Greg laughed. He was playing with me in a way that I had seen Justin and Jeff play games with me verbally. I didn’t understand it was how homosexual men flirted.

Greg said that I was as clueless about his verbal wordplay with him as I had been with Justin and Jeff.

Times like those reminded me that my set of thoughts are often fogged and closed in by a type of social disconnection similar to but not the same as Asberger’s syndrome, a type of mild autism, a mental condition I have dealt with my whole life whereby I see myself in conversation with others, completely comprehend what they are saying but another part of me keeps me separate from them as a natural protection against their ability to make fun of my disconnection.

Girls/women in high school also joked that I was clueless about their flirtatious advances toward me when, in fact, I was fully aware of their intentions and kept my distance.

Today, I drove my mother around downtown Kingsport on the way to see some pre-owned/used motorcycles…

As I drove her around, I remembered my youth and my adulthood all the way up to the present day.

I don’t understand what is supposed to be my species.

I don’t understand why I, a set of states of energy in motion here in this particular place and time for no other reason than happenchance interconnectedness, has a recorded history that makes no sense. We live in this vast universe of which Earth’s history, and the history of only one species’ previous progenitors, is of little meaning, is it not?

Why are our ancestors and what they did of any importance to us when we haven’t yet begun to explore the cosmos, living and dying over and over again on this habitable rock?

Whilst rehashing my father’s side of the family in my thoughts and on this blog, I found a history of my mother’s side of the family I’d recorded in another blog entry years ago. Despite rereading the entry, I still don’t understand why it has any significance — aren’t all of just the same despite outer appearances to the contrary?:

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From “The history of Blount County, Tennessee and its people, 1795-1995,” pg. 352, article 1023 “Pioneer family from DEFFITAHL to TEFFETELLER”   In 1748, a young man named Johannes DEFFITHAL left southern Germany. He traveled to Rotterdam, Holland where he boarded a ship to America. The ship was the “Hampshire” and it docked in Philadelphia, PA. Due to “Americanization”, the immigrant’s name was translated into ”John DEVENDALL”. John later moved to MD and his name was changed again, this time to TIEFENTELLER. He died in 1775. That same year, his son Michael was married.

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Subject:               Origins of the Diffendall’s/Deffendall’s

Post Date:           January 30, 2005 at 12:03:39

Message URL:   http://genforum.genealogy.com/diffendall/messages/7.html

Forum: Diffendall Family Genealogy Forum

Forum URL:        http://genforum.genealogy.com/diffendall/

I recently ran across a Rotterdam, Netherlands record, unfortunately I was unable to copy it, that mentioned a Johann Tiefenthaler leaving for the U.S. at the same time and same ship and arriving in the same location as Johannes Divendall (other different spellings have been used for this last name.)

I believe these two to be the same person. I then checked for a Tiefenthaler in the southern part of Germany, particularly close to or on the Rhein River. Sure enough, I found one Johann Tieffenthaler, christened 25 Aug. 1718 in Bickensohl, Freiburg, Baden, Germany, father: Christoph Tiefenthaler who married Susanna Rieffler/Riessler on 9 Aug. 1707 in Bickensohl. This Johann has an older sister named Anna Barbara Tieffenthaler, christened 9 Dec. 1711 in Bickensohl. There are more Tieffenthaler’s in this region. Next, I checked for a Barbara Weise in Freiburg, Baden, Germany region. I found Barbara Wiss, christened 19 Feb. 1725 in Katholisch, Elzach, Baden, Germany. Her father is Joseph Wiss and mother is Agatha Maier b. 5 Feb. 1706 in Elzach. This I believe to be a very strong lead to our common ancestor, while I have found nothing on Hans Jorg Dievedal except that he was deported back to the Netherlands from England as a reject for American colonization in 1709 due to belonging to the wrong religion.

If anyone can help with this it would be greatly appreciated, you too Eric.

Karen Deffendall Vogt

What is love?

Although my wife has lived in my thoughts for 79% of my life, other women have lived in my thoughts.

In my sophomore year in high school, I saw a flyer/poster on the school hallway walls announcing tryouts/auditions for a high school musical.

I can sing in groups but never performed well in karaoke, unable to sing by myself; however, I can mimic the voices of others who sing in my voice range.

Despite my lack of singing or dancing skills, I called my parents from the school pay phone and told them I’d be late coming home because I was going to audition for a play.

I didn’t know how to audition.

I knew nothing about a director looking not only for talented performers but also for people who generally fit the description of actors.

Dozens of us showed up for auditions and were immediately separated into boys and girls.

Then the director had groups of us, by gender, walk onto the stage and were arranged by height and body build, reassigned seating in the auditorium according to our fit into a character’s looks.

Finally, the director focused on the interaction of a few characters, pairing up boys and/or girls to recite lines from a script for speaking parts, or to sing lines from a songbook for lead characters.

I did not know I had a unique on-stage presence that attracted the attention of the director, Paula.

Paula wished that I could sing but I could not and did not pretend I could. Instead, being generally nervous in front of others, I “acted out,” as my parents liked to say, to detract attention away from my nervousness.

Did I mention that I fall in love easily? Again, a reaction to my nervousness with others. Fall in love with them — fawning attention on others in deference to their personality traits that no one else has noticed — and they won’t see the real me (or so I hope).

Paula became not only the director of the musical I joined, she also became my homeroom teacher and classroom teacher.

In the classroom, Paula assigned us to keep a personal journal, a journal that we also knew Paula would read for writing style tips.

Being nervous about my personal thoughts, I saw Paula as the audience for whom I was writing the journal, fawning my attention on her and backhandedly giving her the loving compliments she was not receiving from others, the compliments disguised in coded writing in an effort to detract her attention from me personally and focus instead on the quality of my writing.

Little did I know that my writing, by no means perfect, worked perfectly well as an extended love letter to Paula I did not mean to write.

Unfortunately, I threw that journal away (or can’t find it easily). I remember writing profusely about breaking up with my first serious girlfriend, which coincided with the creation of the journal. Paula wrote me personal notes in the margins about temporary love, which fed my later journal entries, including sci-fi short stories I wrote to entertain Paula, including terrible endings which killed off the main character because I was too tired to write a proper ending.

At some point in time, Paula fell in love with me.

I thought when we sat together on the edge of the front of the stage and talked for hours that all the stuff she said to me was the same stuff that she as a teacher would say to any other student.

I assumed our conversations were both personal in nature but words we didn’t care if they were published in the school newspaper.

I never realised that the words she shared with me were for my ears only.

She was a Teacher, and I was a Student.

It never crossed my thoughts to read innuendo into what she was telling me, or trying to tell me.

Any private relationship problems she had with her husband I shared with fellow cast members in hopes we could find a way to cheer up Paula, bring her out of the doldrums and chase away the blues.

Little did I know that the fellow cast members thought I was coming on to them, seeing how close my relationship with Paula was.

I was, and am, an introverted nerd at heart.

Perhaps I told you about Paula inviting me to her house for private practice of my speaking lines on a night when her husband was out of town? I’m sure I have so I won’t repeat what happened.

Suffice it to say that my being a nervous introverted nerd, an Eagle Boy Scout and a person trained to respect the roles we play, such as Teacher/Student, gave me the tools I needed to prevent Paula from jeopardizing her place in society.

Too easily I feign falling in love with someone in order to keep my distance and protect my inner core from getting hurt.

Paula knew that about me from my writing yet my actions still seemed to get her to fall in love with me and want to stay close to me until my senior year in high school when she fell in love with another student who got her pregnant, married her and went on to be a well-paid news anchor.

Paula probably thought more about me in my sophomore and junior years in high school than I thought about her.

In my senior year, when yearbooks were given out, I walked around school getting autographs. I was standing in the school theatre talking with former cast members when Paula snuck up to me and casually asked to see my yearbook.

I let her take it and didn’t notice when she returned the yearbook to my side.

Surely I read what she wrote back then. If I did, I don’t remember.

A few days ago, whilst clearing up memorabilia, looking for any photographs or yearbooks that mentioned my time in our high school production of “Hello Dolly,” I found what Paula had written me.

I read it as if I had read it for the first time and was shocked by the emotions in the words she’d written me.

We never know when the person who falls in love with us could have changed our lives so dramatically, especially when the love we’re displaying back to them is a front to protect us ourselves from love.

Paula, I’m glad you were able to give and share your love with someone else who loved you back the way you needed it.

Here are the words she wrote me, if you can read them…

Poems, prayers and promises

I can cook for one, no problem.

I can stir a little lemon dill herb mix in with a dash of blue cheese and sour cream, add sliced fresh homegrown cucumber on a bed or freshly-picked mustard greens for a nice lunchtime summer salad.

What I can’t do is make the loneliness go away.

I can arrange and rearrange the memorabilia in our house but I can’t replace the simple joy of sitting next to my wife on the sofa and having random conversations in the midst of movies on the tellie.

Now is the time I wanted for myself, to write stories circulating in my thoughts for months, maybe years.

Yet, for whom do I write, if not the person absent from the room?

The “not me” who occupies a complementary yet oppositional position within and without/outside me.

Today, the heat pump system is not creating cold air, making the whole house near ambient temperatures here in the summery, humid environs of north Alabama.

I am numb.

Even the former emotional pull of a nice retrospective biographical documentary of John Denver does little more than spark this small blog entry.

How do I get out of this temporary emotional slump and do something more useful?