This Be My Verse (Expanded and Updated for My Life)(With Apologies to Larkin)

They fuck you up, your mum and especially your dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they (and let me repeat the “they” here means especially dad) do^[1].   

They fill you with the faults they (well at least the ones DAD) had

    And add some extra (usually concocted by DAD), just for you^[2].

But they were fucked up in their turn^[3]

    By fools in old-style hats and coats^[4],   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man^[5].

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself^[6].

---

^[1] Well maybe Dad did subconsciously mean it. He as you know has anger issues and abandonment issues.  Perhaps it is repressed anger at his father disaffected parenting style and shit like that. Perhaps it is just that misanthropic streak he has.

^[2] Especially that unwarranted and unfounded fear of wolves in the neighborhood often used by him to hurry you along on your dawdling walks home.  And those genetic mutations that lead to your ADHD and your ASD well those are the result of Dad’s old and chemically altered (by his dabbling in amateur pharmacology experiments at university) genes.  It is his entire fault, really so direct all your anger and frustration and emotional conflict at him.  Mom had nothing to do with this. Blame Dad!!!!

^[3] Mom of course persevered through challenges and hardships.  Despite having to walk uphill to school both ways she really isn’t damaged. Dad on the other hand despite a traditional two parent home is nothing short of an emotional hot mess and has nothing of meaning to offer that can sooth or balm a troubled teenage soul.  His advice is tainted by his luck as a teenager where under no circumstances should have prospered but he did.  He is an unreliable outlier and out right liar. Don’t dare seek dating advice or relationship advice from him for we live in a society that no longer use clubs and dragging by the hair as part of the dating ritual as was the norm in his day.

^[4] Just look at Dad, he looks like they did.  They dressed him funny and he never learned to be fashionable.  If you use Dad's fashion sense for any purpose let it stand as a dire warning of what not to do.

^[5] See Larkin got it.  It is the masculine identifier here.  Dads are the people who screw up there kids, never Moms.  It is only on TV that Moms do the damage. 

^[6] Sigh.

How Did I Get Here

Some of this stuff starts out first on Facebook.  Some of it starts as a note when I am doing a writing exercise.  This one I am not sure if it got up on Facebook but I know it didn't get posted here.  I will thus post it here.  If you want to follow me on Facebook I am Rufus.Butterworth.9 Just send me a friend request. 

Crafting this note of thanks requires a little bit of thought.  It sounds weird saying that I am thankful for mistakes but I am.  The artful way to phrase this feeling is to so I am thankful for serendipitous events.  Serendipity = mistakes that end well.

In the God’s honest truth I NEVER, NEVER meant to end up a Michigander.  But I am here now and I hold this place dear as if it were where I was born. It is a beautiful place and the people are caring and kind, (well except for the state legislature which is populated by self-centered Neanderthals-but that is true in every state isn’t it?)

I filled out the application for Michigan State never planning to go here.  It was free because I was a National Merit letter of commendation recipient and they promised a response in two weeks.  I filled it out as practice for the other applications I would be filling out, and for no other real reason.  Funny thing I got accepted. Funny thing I ended up going here.

My life plan had been to go to Rutgers and chase girls that I had known in high school.  (Nope didn’t have a career plan in mind, just wanted some uh company of the female persuasion) Rutgers (bag of pricks that their admission staff were) didn’t accept me until after the April deadline for notification.  Apparently my limited intellectual capacity just didn’t fit their mold.  But then again Mr. Robinson my guidance counsellor might have told a contact up there about that whole being found naked in the hallway at school thing.

Being pissed off at Rutgers I decided that going six hundred miles from home wasn’t a bad thing.  Obviously my parents wouldn’t drive six hundred miles without calling first.  Thus I stood no chance of being found asleep with a bottle of Jack Daniels in my armpit on the couch like my middle brother had been.  

The decision to send the application was a goof, a test to see what happened.  What happened introduced me to the place and people that have made me the adult (quit snickering) I am.

Oh yeah and there was that other mistake, my wife’s ulcer that wasn’t. And then there that second upset stomach that wasn’t.  Serendipity changed me.  Mistakes made me.

Mistakes, serendipity, misreading maps all have brought me great joy in this life.  I am thankful for the universe’s backhanded way of creating my wonderful life.

Just Walk Away From the Big Box Store's Door and Nobody Will Get Hurt.

Before committing to the holiday madness of Black Friday and the weeks that follow I would like to ask you to as least consider with me the following challenge. Let us change our holiday behaviors because the world needs us to.

Our planet is very small and with unchecked population growth the space we all have to live in is shrinking. The resources that we can use to feed and cloth ourselves are becoming harder to obtain. Around this small blue planet the gap in wealth inequality is growing.

 Being a hamster on the commercial wheel of what year end giving has become both wastes a lot of energy and takes us all to nowhere of value. We shouldn’t go on like this. We can’t go on as if there are no consequences to unchecked consumerism.

 This year let us:

 • Buy mindfully.

 • Give mindfully.

 • Buy local.

 • Buy small. 

 • Give for need.

 • Give for love. 

 • Don’t give for obligation. 

 • Don’t give in exasperation. 

 • Don’t give jokingly or without concern or contemplation. 

 • Consider the gift as a whole. o Where did it come from? 

o Was it made with virtual slave labor.

 o Does purchasing fund oppressive regimes? 

o Does its packaging burden the waste stream? 

o Is it stuff that works? 

o When it is used up can it be recycled? o Will it really add to the health or welfare of the recipient. o Is the gift a response to a need in any sense of the word? 

o Does it fill any void in the recipient’s life? 

• Buy thoughtfully. 

The currently claimed reason for celebrating the coming solstice is a poor shepherd from the middle east. He was a humble man. He exhorted his followers to travel light. He warned us against rampant consumerism when he said to us all “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” Does this sound like a person who would want you to stand in line all night to be one of the first ten in the store on Friday? 

Live with reason and not excess this season.

My First Love Was A Wicked Winding Road…

In cleaning my kitchen I come to hear artists I normally wouldn’t hear. I have a little radio that allows me to sit my old iPhone in a cradle and play Pandora.  I have a James McMurtry channel that but hitting the like/dislike button had become a bit of an Americana channel.  Most of the songs are ballads albeit with rocky guitar riffs.  Most of the songs are by men and carry a bit of murder ballad flavor.  

Two artists that I have come to like quite a bit in the past year or so are Reckless Kelly and Chris Knight.  The Reckless Kelly song that pops up often is called A Wicked Winding Road.  A Wicked Winding Road reminds me of my dreams at age 20 or so. Knowing full well that I had wild dreams but a built in protestant guilt governor the song sort of raises the same feelings in me that reading On the Road did  I go back to those dreams from time to time. Emotion stirrings come to the surface on those visits not really with regret but rather a warm but melancholy nostalgia.  How much lay ahead, how much I would achieve, it was only limited by what I was willing to gamble.  Truth be told I really wasn’t much of a gambler.  http://youtu.be/B38pNFM9a3k

Chris Knight is an entirely different kettle of fish.  He is a down home Harlan County Raylan Givens kind of singer. Knight sings a great ballad for the loser.  I don’t think I am a loser but I know so many of the people in his songs.  Knight’s songs are about alt.americana moments that have gone sideways and have gone sideways so far that you just can’t fix it. You only can live with what has happened displaying the scars incurred. It is only by grace that I did not end up down that road.  Enjoy http://youtu.be/YVXI4l_JU5Q