Gone

She never said a word
Screen door slam is all I heard
I guess she’s pissed at me
Bought another Rush CD, and sporting a goatee…

She just won’t understand
The middle age of man
Bargain basement, used, and second hand
Empty roll my days
Darkness pours in waves
Gone, Geddy sings, I’m miles away

The priest is tired of me
Confessing sins on LSD
An empty river road
Running for the mother lode

I float adrift and free
Laugh in minor key
Bones bleached, tangled in debris
Hold this empty glass
This moment will pass
Gone, there it goes, gone at last…

My my my my Myspace blows
Most of my friends I don’t even know
My my my my Facebook sucks
Most of my friends just don’t give a…

I’ll just keep singing
Till sleep comes upon
This tired old son at last

You want to make the drive
Meet me at Hollywood and Vine
Selling postcards of the 405


Ts Corrigan
May 13, 2010

A Story in a Song - for piano if I ever get one again...

John, Let’s Roll

We were old, bar closed, the windless sky, the groan of December’s bones
She was bruised, young, strung out, confused, like fire to a fuse, ready for the Blues
We were cold, driving slow, a bloodshot roll, fool’s gold – we were old enough to know
Bored again, without a friend, but the enemy asks, a leather flask, we were born again

Pass around a flask just to pass the time – Winter’s wine
Harvest when it’s time, or it dies on the vine - Burns so fine
Up around the bend where the road never ends - Highway 9
John, let’s roll let’s roll, bless my soul

Her eyes wild, and when she smiled, we believed, she’s amused, our stories true
She was moved, by the pain in you, that vain dark muse, a ruse your wife saw through
Moonlight bled, color of lead, you, a clown, you laughed at anything that dirty blond said
You claimed to know, you paused to show, the gravity of revelation, a gift, your secret grove
The road curved, the Chevy swerved, and you observed, our gaze, in wonder, without a word

Pass around a flask just to pass the time – Winter’s wine
Harvest when it’s time, or it dies on the vine - Burns so fine
Up around the bend where the road never ends - Highway 9
John, let’s roll let’s roll, bless my soul

The Chevy sighed; you made a sign, for the girl, take hands with you, kindly guide
Sequoias rise, pierce the sky, of heaven, cathedral spires, blazing stars blind
Cold and clear, drawing near, a veiled fear, like a blade, when the trail disappeared
In your eyes, animal life, then I saw your hand, your hand, so white against the night

Pass around a flask just to pass the time – Winter’s wine
Harvest when it’s time, or it dies on the vine - Burns so fine
Up around the bend where the road never ends - Highway 9
John, let’s roll let’s roll, bless my soul


June 1, 2011

The Bells of St. Catherine

Inspired by a visit to a wooden church in the quaint fishing village of Honfleur, France.

Bells of Sainte-Catherine
There’s a siren song clanging in an old wooden room
Rings through the rafters and rattles the moon
Sing a few bars and the whaler lays down his harpoon
When the bells of Sainte-Catherine come tolling

The first mate is blinded by a rogue wave o’er the bow
Cries for the captain, wipes salt from his brow
The captain spies a loophole in an old wedding vow
When the bells of Sainte-Catherine come tolling

The schooner sinks wounded from the sea’s fatal blast
The captain screams a last prayer and clings to the mast
But our lady on the shoreline claims she’s been miscast
When the bells of Sainte-Catherine come tolling

Bridge:
I feel like I’m waiting for promising news
New Orleans singing the blues
I call on Sainte Catherine, sing a pretty old song
In my arms is where you belong

Up the cold beach crawls the captain with the first mate in tow
The siren song whispers where the northerlies blow
Black raven throws a shadow on the new fallen snow
When the bells of Sainte-Catherine come tolling

The captain casts a cold eye o’er the raven on the wing
He drops to his boxers and jumps in the ring
He’s footloose for a sea dog but he ain’t got that swing
When the bells of Sainte-Catherine come tolling

This old rocker carves up an American Pie
All the church bells hang broken, he doesn’t know why
Ask the dead boys on the levee drinking whiskey and rye
When the bells of Sainte-Catherine came tolling

Bridge

Well I never much cared for the dog-eat-dog life
Happy with a pretty book and a readable wife
But she traded my begging bowl for a stainless steel knife
Now I’m ringing the bells of Sainte-Catherine

t.s. corrigan August 5, 2005

Fresh, Cleaned Up, Some Distance and Perspective

I wanted to retread my last Syria post, more palatable this time. I had a few emails from people thanking me for my honesty. Speaking and writing freely should be our banner, always and forever. To those championing free speech, I wanted to do them honor.

As for the rest... Perhaps the insulting and obscene comments can be kept at bay? Just read/reread with an open mind...

Homestretch. Last school year in Syria, the last months of living there. Come June we were gone. Our plan was to stay three years, although the usual contract is two years. But we knew we wanted to settle in a place, a region, for awhile, to live there. If we’d just sweated out a two-year stint, we’d just finish our first year, and then would have to start looking for employment elsewhere, with all the forms and finances and anxieties accompanying the move—plus, all of the baggage accumulated to ship. Our sea shipment took months to arrive; I can’t imagine wanting to pack that again so soon. Many folks will sign on for two years and vacate when the contract runs out. Quite a few of our friends, who came here a year after we did, disembarked, too, their two-year contract fulfilled. Turnover, it turns out, is high. Why? For one, Syria can be somewhat boring—or at least I got bored there. This might seem strange, considering the recent political upheavals: getting shot at for protesting isn’t boring. But as modes of expression are banned, and having been banned a few generations instills banned expression as a way of life, people naturally and even affably simply don’t express much. Why take a chance on making art when you could be pulled in for questioning? When authority is absolute and strictly from your leader, individual initiative is, of course, stifled. Perhaps there’s a distinctive mode of Western First World living long marrowed in our bones. After you’ve eaten at a few of the restaurants, most of which have exactly the same menus cooking nearly similar styles, you tire, and then either eat at home or eat with Western friends. Not that the cuisine wasn’t good—we’ve had some fantastic meals in Syria. We saw a smattering of music; we heard about an interesting dance group that blew through, but we neglected to catch that breeze. But for myself I’ve recognized what I deem a self-imposed barrier. What we’d intended before we arrived in Syria we never accomplished: learn the language as a gateway—the true gateway—into a new culture. A few furtive attempts at Arabic, and then we gave up. Enough to get by, that’s what we learned. And we did get by. But that’s all we did. So advertisements for a concert could very well have been sprayed across a billboard, but I’d drive by and think the woman pictured was hawking shampoo. I don’t quite know why we never kept up the Arabic lessons. Part of the reason is a very settled lifestyle I acquired, just keeping my own garden cultivated. Stepping lightly around trash day every day—there’s nothing encouraging in suggesting, as some have, that “after awhile you get used to it” as if deadening sense and myopic vision are survival tactics. I don’t want to survive, I want to live. When visiting a lovely beachcove last Spring near the mountain village of Kasab, a few of us actually spent our last morning walking the sand and picking up the trash the locals left. What is redeeming about all this? You will not find a friendlier, more welcoming people anywhere in the region. When charting up what we’ll miss about living here, it all comes down to friends: we’ve made some of the best friends of our lives here. But they’re almost all Westerners. To slough off the worn, threadbare jackets of our culture and suffer the tiny steps into an unfamiliar climate I find honorable. But in the end I find I’m too enamored of the good old West, liberal, environmentally uppity, animal-loving, creating and sustaining styles of music that defy categorizations, churning our theater and song and film and poetry and essay and food and story and dance and painting and sculpture, mundane, punk, heady, angry, desperate, savory, kickass, sultry, delicate, revelatory, whirling and wild, soft and silent, hymns and bells and whistling angels. Case in point: just now, dear reader, you might have noticed a pause in the narrative. Consider yourself astute. Indeed, I laid down the typing finger and walked into the night-lit front patio to investigate a noise like rain toppling and tinkling on the granite. Or whatever the pavement is. I knew what it was: one of our upstairs neighbors from one of the four floors was rinsing down their balcony railing with hosewater. Syria is dusty, incredibly so. Dust settles on all things living or inanimate. On balcony railings. So folks—or their housekeeper—hose the railings off. Of course, the dirty railing water splashed onto our patio, and so dirties it up more. Reader, I’ve trudged upstairs probably a dozen times over the last two years, complaining to seemingly understanding ears that their dirty railing should not be hosed off onto our perhaps clean patio. Dirty water sprinkling onto our cushioned lawnchairs. Go back, dear reader, and note how many times I brought this to their attention, including the owner of the building, a very nice rotund man you met early in this blog, who’d held my hand during the call to prayer one warm August evening and explained that Jew, Christian, Muslim, we all pray to the same God. First off, how many brain cells does it take to figure out that pouring dirty water onto someone else’s patio isn’t acceptable? Got a brain cell ballpark? Good, okay, then how often do you have to be told before you cease and desist, or perhaps—oh man, a wacky thought, this, hold on folks, we’re racing round the rickety end of the wooden rollercoaster soggy and peeling, two wheels off and flaring, no seatbelts—perhaps you can just get a rag warm water wet and wipe the railing down. I’m sorry, am I in line for a Nobel Prize for that brilliant idea? So I just walked out in righteous indignation, looked up in despair, thought I’d take the wet cushion up to the 4th floor, bang on the sweet guy’s door, and present him with his housekeeper’s damn failings. But I just shook my head. Why bother. Daily experience here is split between the lauded and the lame. A positive: a few weeks ago I was attempting to connect the natural gas tank for the stove. The nut wouldn’t screw, no matter what I tried. Frustrated, I went round the corner to the little shop and asked the proprietor how it works. Without a thought, he happily locked up his shop and accompanied me to our apartment, and connected our gas. A negative: the prevalence in this day and age of the 7th century symbol of oppression of women: the hijab. You just can't get used to it. The empowerment of women IS the one tried and true thing that lifts the economy of peoples. I defy every male on the planet to read Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication for The Rights of Women" written in the 18th century and then try to argue rationally why women should be covered. A positive: the utmost hospitality that is hallmark of the region going back to nomadic times. We’ve experienced nothing but kindness and smiles in almost all of our dealings here. And as it never ceases to amaze me—as writ in these pages—if you don’t have money enough to pay for the dozen bottles of wine picked out, George (there are Georges selling wine and booze on either side of this one street in the Armenian quarter) hands you your bagged wine, scoffs at your apology, and says “Next time, next time!” and trusts you’ll pay then, which you do. And so, let’s end on a positive. All in all, we’re glad we made the journey, found friends, travelled, and lived in Syria. But I can’t live without Art. And a decent Jewish deli within a stone’s throw.

To See Beauty You Gotta Rise Above the Dust

We have to begin thinking of our time here as living in Honduras. If we trap our imaginations in the rough city we reside in, Tegucigalpa, we'll miss the startling beauty and memorable experiences to cherish here. A national holiday awarded us a three-day weekend, so Carrie and I determined to escape. I haven't blogged much about our short time here, as there's been little of note to note. Much like Aleppo, there's not much to do here. Unlike Aleppo, there's loads of street crime, and we are warned not to travel out at night, take cabs everywhere, stay out of certain neighborhoods. And here in Tegus, I think I can safely chart one of the most interesting cultural experiences of my life: one weekday afternoon we were in the backseat of a taxi stuck in traffic that clogs the narrow winding hilly streets here, chocking on exhaust, en route to Walmart. That was our highlight of the day. Hope we don't get robbed. To return: Carrie knew of some cabanas set high on a mountain bordering La Tigre National Park about 20 kilometers from Tegus. A short taxi ride from near the Mexican embassy in our neighborhood to one of the main roads where the chicken buses (old schoolbuses probably sold from the States) wait to groan and wheeze their way up to Valle de Angeles, a quaint colonial artisan handcraft village in the mountains. Another bus ride 15 kilometers to be dropped off at a road leading into the even smaller village of San Juancito, an old mining town once the economic powerhouse of Honduras, now nearly defunct and shrunk to a quarter of its size after the mining companies and a Pepsi bottling plant boarded windows and doors and skipped out. Once out of the dull grays and rickety browns of Tegus, lush green mountains and forests rise around the snaking roads, banana and coffee plantations, side of the road ramshackle stalls where peasant fires twirl white smoke into verdant countryside. Once dropped off, we called Jorge and Monica, the German owners of Cabana Mirador El Rosario, and a half hour later we were shaking hands with a tall thin Jorge who offers a large smile of teeth but is otherwise soft-spoken and quiet and content in the cloud forest he calls home. The rocky rumbling bouncing bumping ride in Jorge's pickup took indeed a half hour, up and up and up we go, the daily rains washing out scoops of earth from the road. Three big dogs greet us at the gate, and proceed to lead us down the winding stone steps past terraced gardens and fruit trees, and direct us to our cabana. For 13 years Jorge and his wife have operated the cabanas on two acres high on a sloping mountainside. Just two cabanas, clean, spartan, elegant wood. But the deal sealer is the view from our deck: forested mountains rolling down to a valley of sugar cane with a thick brown rushing river cutting gently through. Puffs of white cloud like daintily poised whipped cream toppings sift across the sky. Below us is their rich, diverse garden (no spraying), hummingbirds flit through the dense brush and the soft roar of the waterfall is heard around a distant canyon, otherwise the blessed silence and temperate winds of Honduras. What would you expect to pay for a weekend in Paradise? How about $35 a night? After a leisurely lunch of sandwiches, cut celery and apples, Carrie and I hiked the trails into La Tigre, vines trellising through mossy trees of grand and wild abandon, slivers of sunlight consecrating a curve in the trail, mist suddenly descending, and after days of heavy rain, arching waterfalls drew down the hillsides and splashed happily. For three hours hiking Carrie's and my soul were the only ones we encountered. About ten minutes from the cabana on our return hike, a torrential downpour soaked us, the road back down becomes a river, puddles formed in our hiking boots, my shirt creaked when I finally under our roofed deck removed my dripping clothes. The expanse of sky was white with foamy stormcloud and rain, and we were so high up that we could actually see the clawing fingers of a dark threatening raincloud spreading and convulsing toward us. A change of clothes, we head down another level to the main house. Jorge lights a fire to warm our cold feet. The dogs, furry and glad to see us dry, wander in and curl around our chairs. A cat waltzes by. Jorge opens the night's first bottle of a Chilean Cabernet. The last twilight blue shudders and then darkens in the panoramic sky outside wide windows settling on a peaceful world. Jorge quietly eases out of the room to prepare dinner. Carrie and I count our blessings, peer up at the high vaulted ceilings, we the cabana's only guests and now feeling like royalty in the main house, warmed by the now blazing fire, here on this lush mountainside in the quiet soft air of this forest in this Third World country, our feet up, the dogs' hair soft to our strokes, wine glasses full and held high, and we toast to the magic we've found, that glowing balm sweet and healing.