Friday, April 3, 2009

On The Lam, Plowed Fields

I have run into this all my life. When things get hairy, I lose stuff. I don't mean I lose stuff because things got hairy, not stuff obviously connected, but other stuff, even really weird stuff. The divorce is grinding along and something happens and all of a sudden I have clipped a car, grabbing the rear bumper by my license plate holder. That was just enough to break that car loose, caused a bad head on further down and I lost my license holder. I was in a place I would never have been had I not been losing my wife. I lost a bunch there even though the car came out okay and I wasn't even cited. The other driver was speeding way fast. It was obvious that was what had happened. But it still haunts me. More often the loss is simpler. Here it's shoes.

On The Lam

I lost my damn shoe,
Made it hard to toe the line
But I had to run
And it just came off.

When you run from the dope cops
Sometimes it happens
like that. Jumped fences,
Hid in back yards, under trucks,
Threw the other shoe
Away, saved my life.

***********************************

Threw the other shoe away and saved my life....sacrifice as a sacred act under duress leads to divine intervention. Whether it really does or not, that is the intent of sacrifice, no matter when and where it appears in the spiritual walks that we do as people intent on a relationship with God. The price of that relationship is simply there. I have had a lifelong struggle with the cost of having God in my life. It seems a true thing. It happens in my life whether I like the idea or not. It is equally true that the idea of enforced loss revolts me, and I do revolt. Then when things happen too fast I end up inadvertently sacrificing, by accident. I just am not capable enough to keep my shit. Damn it.
***

Off in Utah seagulls show up. There is that old story of the locust plague and the gulls came and saved the Mormons. In Idaho too, there are gulls in the plowed fields. This was a photo Robin Starfish put up on his Motel Zero site. That photo had an air about it and I went to this place:

Plowed Fields

Off in the plowed fields
I saw evidence of you.
The gulls who loved us
Remain in furrows
Searching for your long shadow
Now that you are gone.

As they look they find
Tasty things where your shadow
Once was, and I ache
To know I've lost you.
I search plowed fields in my life.
I too call like gulls.

13 comments:

  1. I fought against sacrifice my whole life...it got me anyway....much to my amazement and disgust, I learn from it.

    Must be the matyr in me :)

    Maybe when we stop searching and calling it finally finds us?

    Who knows...

    xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, and learn too that learning is not its function but can be its gift. It really sucks when the sacrifice is a repeat and you have already learned the lesson but the need remains.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Indeedy.

    I think the whole point is to do it willingly :0)

    This time I am....mostly

    ReplyDelete
  4. Shoes again!! I like this; it made me laugh. I guess I could relate.

    The gulls gave me a sad feeling. Longing, nostalgia? I'm heavy with those feelings at the best of times.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Michelle, I have had odd timing with the death of sick or old cats that had me thinking of sacrifice in this accidental way. Twice in my life a deeply loved cat died at a critical moment, so precisely timed as to force me to think something sacrificial was going on. Both times it seemed not my doing at all but theirs, like the cats did it and did it willingly.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes, Rachel, shoes again. And true shoes. Shoes I actually wore. That particular night I did indeed end shoeless. I literally ran myself out of one slip on boot and dumped the other one. I walked a fence in stockinged feet and hid under a truck while the owner was walking around looking for the cause of commotion. I was indeed in the early stage of running from the San Jose police (or whoever they were). Soon I would go to Arizona.

    ReplyDelete
  7. so are you like a fugitive from justice? is there a bounty on your head? i always fall for the bad boys......

    a real desperado!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh I LOVE THE LOST MY SHOE POEM
    Unfortunately, I have often gone kicking and screaming against sacrifice....to the point of where it may have lost its point.Learning the lesson fights tooth and nail with need to do , to have , to hold at times

    Hopefully the next offer will be more gracious.
    lINDA

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ghost, I was in the counter culture. :) You still have to make a living somehow. I had a one day a week gas station gig. That paid my rent. I went to school to justify it all, a light load, one or two classes is all in any term because I was doing far too much other stuff, some of it rather time consuming. And I had to "hustle" for eating money and dope money, clothing and the like. I had a good connection and so I used it and then hooked up with other guys with other connections and we had a little business. My last partner was getting a water bed business going too. We lived in the same apartment, and we did some stuff. Then I had to leave town. There was a grand jury indictment list. But for some reason I was never actually popped.

    I had a connection with the local paper and he saw me in that time, when I had lost my boots the night before, and he said to me "What are you doing here?" When I asked why he told me he had seen my name on a prepublication list of people getting popped down at the paper.

    That's when I went to Arizona for a while and changed my whole life. No more outlaw stuff, just a common drunk from then on out.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Linda, being a hardhead does have its price...

    ReplyDelete
  11. I can't quite think that my mother dying is her sacrifice for me somehow.

    This time it is mine for her.

    But I do see what you mean.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I know, Michelle. There are conundrums between the truth of inner and outer states. My cats did not sacrifice for me as it seems, not if you look at things from their point of view.

    If you insist on an "objective" stance. This kind of talk is complete bullshit. This objectivism is one of the crowning successes of our species. Things just happen from here. There is no coordination between loss and gain, no meaning to it as we speak of sacrificial acts, at least no meaning that extends beyond my inner space and yours.

    My inner experience is where I look at my cat Livingstone giving his life so that my wife Ann can survive her operation. There is no direct connection, cannot be. The rules of the objective world do not permit such connections. Of course you mother does not sacrifice for you in this way.

    The intentional sacrifices on the planet are of a different nature than the "accidental sacrifices" that I have tried to describe here. The accidents belong in the world of synchronicities. They demonstrate how meaning is layered on things, that there are worlds upon worlds, and that points to the nature of spirit, how it penetrates matter and yet is somehow beyond it.

    ReplyDelete

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


Get Your Own Visitor Map!