I was driving down a hill into the town on my small red bicycle.
it`s a woman`s bike, but it`s small and light and it`s fast off the
mark. It would cost me a fortune to get it`s equivalent in a shop that
sells racing bikes.
I`m told I look silly riding it. I`m six
feet and about 230 pounds, so I suppose I do look odd
on that little red bike with no crossbar.
"It`s good for my ego", I`m thinking . If some kind of humility is the
goal. Maybe looking ridiculous every once in a while will help.
Peeling down the big hill, seeing the lakes beyond the small
city, at that speed trying not to have a mystical experience.
A poem`s been in my head these last few days,
a poem by Wallace Stevens. It goes something like,
"Things exactly as they are
You can play on the blue guitar."
So I`m zipping into town, sun shining on my face. After
February, which has been a month of utter and ignominious
darkness, worse than usual, the sun feels great on my face.
I`m smacking my lips thinking of the three bottles of sherry I was
going to be able to buy at the liquor store,with the twenty dollars I
had left.
I was coasting straight down Cassels Street directly,
when I got this feeling. I`ve learned not to ignore this feeling, when
it comes, which is not often....it`s usually significant.
I got the sense that I was to turn left and go into the small
forgotten mall at the bottom of the hill.
So I did.
There at the edge of the mall, I see an old dusty looking
small used furniture shop. I get off the bike and walk over
and peer into the window. The front window was full of oddities,
oddities I appreciate like old Export A tobacco tins, old pliars and
ancient metal files.
I opened the shops door, walked in and said hello. A woman
showed up out of the back. We said a few words, nothing about
music...
She said, " Here, I`ve got something to show you. "
She walked through a door that led down into the basement,
leaving me in her shop with all her valuables.
She re-emerged from the basement after a few minutes.
She was carrying an expensive-looking guitar case She set it down
gently on the glass counter.
She opened the case for me and said, "Take a look at this."
And there it was before me, a blue guitar.
So I picked it up and held it above my head. It was damn
nearly as light as an old Martin. I looked at the neck . The neck was
was straight and the steel strings were beautifully close to the
fretboard.
It takes a lot of strength for a guitar neck to hold the stress
of tightly wound steel strings. So steel string guitars are often quite
heavy to lift. This one was light as a feather. This is a very good sign
We bargained a bit, but I`m really not that good at it. I was
broke and not in the mood to buy a guitar. Whatever the price
it was going to cut dangerously into next week`supplies.
But I knew it would be a bad thing, a spiritual letdown in the
universe, if I didn`t follow this feeling that destiny had taken
a hand in the life of those around me
The shop-woman`s name was Pauline.
Pauline and I made a deal, and she was kind to me, letting me
have it for half the asking price.
She said, `The asking price for this make of guitar
would normally be three or four times this price, musicians tell
me. I don`t normally sell guitars. I sell furniture. But I had a funny
feeling about this one, so I set it aside.`
She said, "Perhaps because it`s blue. I knew someone would be
coming for it. I just didn`t know who."
Living alone for the last few years I`ve done some thinking.
Trying to write these books, and taking myself too seriously, I
had been a selfish prick for the last considerable while. Don`t
get me wrong, you`ve go to be extremely selfish, arrogant and
determined just to get to the typewriter .But I`d carried it to an
extreme.
I`d also been deeply suspicious about women for many years
and that did not help the overall situation.
I`d turned into a hermit, and something in me wouldn let
me even walk to the post office. To mail a book to my
reputable publisher who has been waiting for... for over a year.
And the book was finished! There was nothing more to be done.
I just can`t seem to do anything anyone expects of me. I
can`t seem to follow orders.I won`t even obey the orders I give
myself! Go figure.
This is very odd, and more than a tad disturbing.
I decided I was going to something do for someone else
every once in a while. So the blue guitar I was buying as a gift for my
little daughter. "Happy Easter," I was thinking. I looked up. The wind
was high, the sky was blue.
Just like the guitar.
Somewhere I could hear the angels singing.
*
