“That’s Super Stuff!” “Make Stuff” “I Love Free Stuff” “The Good Stuff” “My Stuff” “Stuff in My Life” “Stuff That Works”
“The Right Stuff”
“How’s Your Stuff?”
There are so many variations on the use of the word stuff. This last May we attended the last “Ken and Mary’s Blues Project” house concert in Porter, Texas. Before the music started, Kenneth Harris told the story of how the Project came about from his listening to Sunday blues on Houston’s KPFT. One Sunday he was listening to Nuri Nuri’s Blues Brunch.
“. . . he [Nuri] was interviewing this guy, and they played some of his stuff, and I called Nuri on the phone, and I said Nuri do you know anybody in the Houston area that can do that type of stuff, and he told me you meet me at Billy Blue’s like next Saturday night.”
Long story short, Kenneth found that stuff in the form of the Moe Hansum Band.
As I listen to Kenneth’s story I couldn’t help but think of Guy Clark’s “Stuff that Works.”
Stuff that works, stuff that holds up The kind of stuff you don’ hang on the wall Stuff that’ real, stuff you feel The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall
Continuing on this theme of “Stuff,” in the 1970’s there was a jazz-funk band called “Stuff.” The members were Gordon Edwards (bass), Richard Tee (keyboards), Eric Gale (guitar), Cornell Dupree (guitar), Chris Parker (drums), and later Steve Gadd (drums).
There is good stuff and not so good stuff, because of what we do with our stuff. We have too much stuff. Earth’s beauty is being scarred by the stuff we throw away daily. As someone who spends a lot of time outdoors admiring nature’s beauty, I see stuff on our trails, hanging in trees, blowing in the wind, in our lakes and streams.
In December of 2007, a short documentary was released. The documentary was critical of excessive consumerism and promotes sustainability, which has gone from a movie to a movement over the last ten years — a Community of more than a million changemakers worldwide, working to build a more healthy and just planet. This land is our land! You can join the movement.
Lady Bikers at an Ice House in East Texas in a “Show Us Your Tits” Contest — Computer Art by kenne
The Perfect Trilogy
On a hot Sunday we ride a twisting two-lane highway to a Texas Ice House Near Cut & Shoot where the beer and blues music releases bikers inner desires listening to “My Baby Don’t Wear No Panties” fueled by women showing their tits — blues, beer, and tits, the perfect trilogy.
He had short patience for scientific study: All they want to know is why frogs croak. It’s a philosophical opposition, his believing in things as only themselves and the intrusiveness of explanations. I can’t begin to tell you how much he hated ballet. What’s the good of it? He liked The Flintstones and wrestling. Frogs croak. Otherwise he liked things that could be lifted and stacked and put into place. He thought best with his hands. He built clocks, cradles, worked a lathe. He took the world’s measure. He was good and he was of it.
The things that happen to us in life do so because we act. The more we act, the more opportunities we have upon which to act, the more we connect creating a vessel filled with learning moments. If we don’t act on the moments, each will become an opportunity lost. Even so, it’s important not to think about what may have been left behind.
My vessel is an alchemy of acts from which new opportunities are poured – acts attract acts. Paulo Coelho wrote in his bestseller, The Alchemist, “There is only one way to learn,” the alchemist answered. “It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”
It was ten years ago that I first read Coelho’s enchanting fable. It was in preparation for leading a group of four young professionals to the state of Sáo Paulo in Brazil that I learned of Paulo Coelho and his 1988 novel. The book fit well into my own philosophy and set the tone for the trip and remains instrumental to my life.
Again, one act leads to another when at this past Sunday’s Society of the 5th Cave reading club meeting, The Alchemist was selected for the March reading. Once again the concept of alchemy is front stage, this time from a different perspective, which will create many new learning moments.
I’m pleased to be reading this inspiring book ten years out. The Alchemist is the gift that keeps on giving. Just today I received an email from my brother Tom, reminding me of someone I have also not read in recent years, American poet, Conrad Aiken, which my poem “Solstice Night,” reminded him of the first lines from Aiken’s long poem, “The House of Dust.”
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.
In turn, his reminding me of Conrad Aiken, and the return of The Alchemist, that reminded me of the following from Aiken’s poem, “A Letter from Li Po.”
What’s true in these, or false? which is the ‘I’
of ‘I’s’? Is it the master of the cadence, who
transforms all things to a hoop of flame, where through
tigers of meaning leap? And are these true,
the language never old and never new,
such as the world wears on its wedding day,
the something borrowed with something chicory blue?
In every part we play, we play ourselves;
even the secret doubt to which we come
beneath the changing shapes of self and thing,
yes, even this, at last, if we should call
and dare to name it, we would find
the only voice that answers is our own.
We are once more defrauded by the mind.
Defrauded? No. It is the alchemy by which we grow.
It is the self-becoming word, the word
becoming world. And with each part we play
we add to cosmic Sum and cosmic sum.
Who knows but one day we shall find,
hidden in the prism at the rainbow’s foot,
the square root of the eccentric absolute,
and the concentric absolute to come.
Life has so many gifts that keep on giving. Become a part of the act.
With morning temperatures in the 50’s & 60’s, our Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists Friday hikes are now off Mt. Lemmon and back in the canyon. Today’s hike was one of my favorite, Blackett’s Ridge that runs between Sabino Canyon and Bear Canyon.
The 6.3-mile hike begins at the Sabino Canyon Visitor Center and is relatively flat for the first 1.5 miles before the trail becomes very rocky, turning into a series of 36 switchbacks, with an elevation change of 1800 feet for the next 1.5 miles.
The trail hasn’t changed much over the six years I have been hiking Blackett’s, and I would like to say the same for me, but my old body is beginning to signal that it might not be willing to hike trails with this much elevation change in such a short distance.
kenne
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity…
As nature changes,
I seek a balance between acting and
being acted upon.
— kenne
*****
“So sinks the mind in deep despair And sight grows dim; when storms of life Blow surging up the weight of care, It banishes its inward light And turns in trust to the dark without. This was the man who once was free To climb the sky with zeal devout To contemplate the crimson sun, The frozen fairness of the moon — Astronomer once used in joy To comprehend and to commune With planets on their wandering ways. This man, this man sought out the source Of storms that roar and rouse the seas; The spirit that rotates the world, The cause that translocates the sun From shining East to watery West; He sought the reason why spring hours Are mild with flowers manifest, And who enriched with swelling grapes Ripe autumn at the full of year. Now see that mind that searched and made All nature’s hidden secrets clear Lie prostrate prisoner of night. His neck bends low in shackles thrust, And he is forced beneath the weight To contemplate — the lowly dust.”
Kenneth Harris (May 20, 2017) — Image by kenne
Lady Bikers at an Ice House in East Texas in a “Show Us Your Tits” Contest — Computer Art by kenne
Kate and Jaxon Bailey
Kate and Jaxon Bailey
Kate Bailey, Jaxon Bailey, Katelyn Turner and Nick Bailey
Kate, Jaxon and Katelyn — Images by kenne
Image by kenne
SCVN Friday Hike, Blackett’s Ridge (November 4, 2016) — iPhone Images by kenne
Autumn Maple Leaves — Computer Art by kenne
