Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Clarence Odbody
Clarence Odbody was George Bailey's guardian angel in Frank Kapra's film, It's a Wonderful Life. He dove in a river to save George's life, but dove in before George, who was still contemplating suicide the moment Clarence hit the river, immediately followed with the singular inter vivos purpose of saving Oddbody, which ensured their joint survival as Oddbody had pre-calculated. As I think back, Mr. Odbody has been there for me, many, many times, as well. When my Papaw, Paul Clifford Smith, ran his truck off the road drunk in Roane County and jettisoned vomitus throughout the cab after flipping us over en route to Warburg. I was a baby, sideways resting on the passenger side window with the singular little purpose of where I should put my half drank Coke on account of the vomit. Stll diapered when they took us both to the Roane County jail. My mother was never informed after the Smith family fetched me. I had shat and was passed from some stupid Roane County Deputy Sheriff, arms outstretched, to my Grandmother, Anna Mae. still a little guy, I sneaked outside while Art was probaly fucking my Mommy, climbed in the Tempest, and knocked my soon to be father's car out of gear, whereupon we rolled down the steep side of the ridge, destroying his beloved Buick and the peripheral chattle of others; Or when I tried to bake myself to death in a hot car while my mother was shopping for dresses - the people came with water and ice - a perfect act of adolescent recrimination. Pure success. She was horrified; Or when I flipped a tractor down a steep hill into a pond unscathed; Or those hundreds of times I should have died of drugs; Or in 1979, when we crashed into a car head on, breaking my neck; Or when Slayer Thor attempted in earnest to beat me to death with num chucks; or when the devil, freshly pummelled by my fists, pulled a shotgun on me and chambered it as I implored him to "do it, goddammit!"; Or the time I got beat half to death and hospitalized the etiology of which involved my drunken stubborn refusal to withdraw my shod feet from a goddamn coffee table; Or when I had a loaded shotgun sunk deep into my rib cage once by a madman; or when I had to crawl using only my elbows to the highway as I lay dying. So, I'm beginning to get the message and act accordingly. It is very likely that my luck and Clarence Odbody have terminated. Now comes careful stewardship of these serial salvations with gratitude and a reliable intuition that warns me that my luck has finally run out. But, unlike so many of my clients, I'm alive to tell about it.
Monday, December 29, 2025
Sunday, December 21, 2025
Mornings Making Life Worth the Trouble
A modest indtroduction into the brain followed by Zoe Keating and her cello, quilted cats, expensive coffee, pickled eggs,a copy of Lolita, and my errant co-defendant co-dependants breathing out bad breath on my blanket, purring, trilling and well lapped, whose bacterail emissions entangle with my own weirdly intoxicating and slowly rising wafts of "thick, lipid-rich sweet sweat," which reminds me of my grandmother in her house dress doing dishes and humming Hank Williams, while the gas unit hums out its own deep wafts, exhaling warm breath for me and the my spirited tres panochas. We have no need nor desire for travel.
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Getting Old; My gigantic ball-sack descending
I told a dude today that I'm driving my last car and feeding my last cat, the youngest of three. He gave me one of those looks that signaled his receipt of vexing commentary. I've always had a knack for reading facial epressions, having learned from the master at exhibiting them. His perplexed eyes and telling facial shape-shifts assured me that he, like seemingly all people in Appalachia proper, suffered from what I call striaght-pipe mentality, which infected them as small children from sectarian agencies such as VBS, fuelled by the lies told by preachers. It has become axiomatic that whenever I am faced with what used to be be exasperating angern at the insanity of life here, I returned to both my AA instruction and especially the dharma, which calms internal storms. And I went on my way carrying none of it as I went. I am irreverant concerning most all of human traditions and cultural practices, especially those that have become expected. I'll spare the inventory. But there are at least two that are impervious to my skepticism; the law and the dharma. With emphasis on the latter, I cannot say that I've read any significant measure of the suttras. I don't necessarily belive that the Buddha wasn't myth. I don't even buy that the man beneath the the boddha tree came up with the suttras; they're too perfect for human invention. In any event, in my fourth year of meditation, which now comes quite natural to me, I have realized that the greatest challenge is in the first of the noble eight fold path to eventual escape from the wheel of Samsari: Right View. RV has two parts -- honest view, which is absolutely no problem for me as I have been witnessing the unfolding of pure, oftentimes, wicked fact for decades now, and what Thich Nhat Hanh referred to as inter-being. Therein lies my inability to connect.
Friday, December 12, 2025
Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Fetch Me My Pistol
It's in the wardrobe, honey. Careful, it's loaded. Goddamn, Daddy, it's heavy,too! A pistol is a serious thing, girl. The weight is a good measure of its ability to inflict immediate and irreparable changes in people, places, and things, all depending on the hand that holds it. Never touch the metal if you can help it, honey. My uncle Billy Joe bragged on me once for handling a 357 magnum correctly. By the handle, perfectly fetched from a remote place in Deer Lodge, Tennessee. That compliment still hangs in my periphery, like a curtain. My pride is pure 'cause my Uncle Billy Joe didn't brag on people much at all. I miss him badly. I miss his amazing stash, too. Okay, time to put it up, honey. Well what you wanted me to fetch if for? I just wanted to look at it and remember the secrets it keeps silent.
Cold Souls (2009) Official Trailer # 1 - Paul Giamatti
This misleading trailer does the film, which is deep and dangerous, a violent injustice. It has to do, perhaps, with poetry and fluoxitine. But it has to do with so much more.
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Friday, December 5, 2025
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Finally, a song about routine. This is a very important piece of music to me because is recognizes the enormous value of the otherwise lar...
