homeful

-done truckin', for now...

it's so good to be back. i was telling DJ today how The Dead line,

                      "lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been"

has been popping up in my head here and there lately in-between long hours of the Primus song "Too Many Puppies".

           "the who?"

                                                  "no, not The Who, The Greatful Dead!"

it's strange to think that in 2 months time it will have been a year since dad died. it's been a rough year with a long, hard, winter spent away from the home i didn't even know i had here in Philly. or at least i didn't know it then quite the way i know it now, which is true of all things in life that we come to, go away from, and come back to again. 

-"And it takes a girl, and a night

And a book of this kind

A long long time to find it's way back"...

this summer i decided i'd be living in Portland, Oregon by now. i spent a good deal of October there and at the end of it i remember sitting up in my friend Rachael's "guest drawer bed" (yes, it's a bed in a giant drawer), unable to sleep (kinda like tonight), and just longing for "home". i prayed about that longing then and felt at peace and a few weeks later, back in Council, Idaho, walking home from church, i thought back on a phone conversation i'd had with my good friend Jess earlier that morning. we'd talked about how her boyfriend Mike (also my good friend) had crashed his bike and busted his jaw real bad. she told me about how our good friend Marco had walked to the hospital with a juicer, fruit, cards, and checkers all "tied to his back" and, thinking back on that image of brotherly love, walking down Missman Road, i decided i should move back to Philly. it took me a little while to realize i'd decided it then but i did realize it in the end.

-replenishing my HP

it's good to be back. this is a good place to heal. this is where my people are. this is where i want to be. there are good things on the horizon. real good things. it's good to be back.

fin.

i wrote this while listening to these songs...

1.I Am the Mountain - Damien Jurado

2.Brother of the Prodigal Son - Everything, Now!

3.Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

4.Sometimes - My Bloody Valentine

5.Caring is Creepy - The Shinns

6.Fell in Love at 22 - Starflyer 59

7.You Can't Hurry Love - The Concretes

8.Lovely Rita - The Beatles

9.Astral Plane 1 - Cowboy Angels

10.Looking back I should have been Home more - Richard Swift

11.Walt Whitman's Neice - Billy Bragg and Wilco

with quotes by...

The Greatful Dead

Freaks and Geeks

Woody Guthrie

and if you're in the mood for a good war protest song...

and some nights you just lock your itunes on Daniel Johnston and call it a day...

...you just lay back in the recliner in the living room with your eyes closed and your mom puts hot towels on your face to make your eye feel better and it makes you feel a little better too and in-between songs you here snippets of Fox News People a-preachin' 'bout palin and then a line from a commercial about viagra as you get lost in that lo-fi and lonesome sound. lost right along with "dem blues, dem blues, dem blues, dem-damn-blues" and at first you think you might loose them there but really you just get a better look at them and yourself by not looking at them and yourself so much and just being lost in the songs that were recorded on those cassette tapes. and when he sings you an encouraging song it sounds honest and believable

               

                                      "you're gonna make it joe"

and you feel a little better too.

before all of that, and during it, i was thinking of this part in the book Travels with Charley where John Steinbeck and his trusty french poodle Charley have been driving across the country for a couple months and they've just left John's friendly childhood home of California, flown through Arizona, and started across New Mexico when they get a bad case of the "mullygrubs". John tries to pick up their spirits by making Charley a birthday cake, which is really just hot cakes and lots of syrup with a candle on top even though Charley tells him he doesn't know when his birthday is (Charley talks by wagging his tail by the way). ol' John even tries drinking to his loyal french friend's health in straight whiskey but still Charley just licks his whiskers and asks 

                                         "What makes you so moony?"

"It's because i've stopped seeing. When that happens you think you'll never see again." 

He stood up and stretched himself, first fore and then aft.  "Let's take a stroll up the hill" he suggested,

                                                     "Maybe you've started to see again."

and i know i will see again.

with my bad eye and my beat up heart too. i'll see again. and it's not so bad, somedays when you can't see your friend even gives you her login info for her netflix and you watch a couple episodes of the office and you laugh and then you have people you can call who'll always share in your lot, be it good or bad, and you'll get a good night's sleep and you'll feel better in the morning.

a beginner's beginning/"we have the technology..."

before it starts.

here it is, a blog that i'm going to write for awhile at least, at least long enough to see if it "sticks" with me...blogging i mean. i don't think i'll capitalize my sentences, i don't know how often i'll write, i do hope it'll help with my writing and encourage me to read the blogs of my friends because i do have some pretty talented and good hearted friends. "George just lucky i guess..."

it starts with surgery. 

a surgeon i'd met only once before today put 1 1/2 inches worth of titanium and 4 screws in my skull to repair the floor fracture portion of the "orbital blow-out" of my left eye earlier today. the long version of that story is "there is no logical reason to ever throw a shovel, or anything else, to no one in particular on any kind of job site" the short version is "wrong place, wrong time, right idiot with said shovel". it's one of those things, reconstructive surgery, where the experts and engineers of the thing keep reassuring you, saying things like... 

"it isn't a big deal"

                                                                                                            "we do this all the time"

                              "there's very little risk of any complications"

...but sitting in the waiting room i couldn't help but think of this line from the short novel, Remembering, by Wendel Berry where the main character is flying from San Francisco, California back to his home in rural Port William, Kentucky. he's looking around the plane before take off and noticing how everyone's so calm, meanwhile, he can't get his mind off of how in a few moments all of their lives will depend solely on a couple of jet engines, solely upon a handful of cycles of internal combustion, solely on a couple little flames not burning out at hundreds of thousands of feet above the rugged and sparsely populated country of the American Southwest. it's strange all of the things we describe, out-loud or sub-consciously as "it isn't a big deal" and usually it's just because "we do this all the time". i once heard Tom Petty say, 

                                                   "2003 is a strange year to be a rock-and-roller"

i'll continue that logic and say these "2000's" are strange times to be anyone or anything.

5 little treasures in a 7 5/8" chest.

my eye was swolle shut for the first several days after i looked down into that manhole to ask that idiot if he wanted any help getting that shovel up out of there. even when i could open it a little it was still more comfortable to leave it closed. eventually it opened easily and felt good that way save for the double vision that today's "it isn't a big deal" procedure hopefully fixed. so i bought an eye patch. i never imagined that, in the time of my life, i would ever be sick to death of pirate jokes but after wearing this little $2.97 elastic and plastic accessory i'll never say "ARGHHH" to another friend, enemy, or acquaintance who wears that, or any other, form of "buccaneer gear". still, in these situations, the first of such obvious "betcha' never heard that one!" jokes is always the best one and my first was no exception. the morning after buying said eye-patch at walgreens (yargh, you can get 'em at any walgreens matey!) my friends ten-year-old son looked at me across the breakfast and nonchalantly asked through a smirk...

                                                                                                    "so, did you find your treasure yet?"

and i'm happy to say that after today i have. let me explain, the title of this blog is not a joke, i am the "2001 Jr. Rodeo Bible Camps of Idaho Bucking Machine Champion" and i have the belt buckle to prove it. my dad, Charley Stovner ('55-'09 rest in peace pops), was a Champion Saddle Bronc Ridder. i won't list how many times he won how many different rodeos and year end championships but i will say he was one of the best of his time and only two things kept him from winning more, better paying, bigger, more prestigious national rodeos

the first,

was his love for his family and his dream that we could all travel around the greater Pacific Northwest, together, on the weekends and in the summers from little rodeo to little rodeo. i cannot imagine a better way to grow up. later in life, when he had retired and i had had a small taste of success in being, as he put it, "a professional musician", i told him how much i admired his "family first, silver buckles second" philosophy. he took the compliment and said he had no regrets and i know that he knew he could very well have "won the world" but he just told me how much he cherished those years of traveling together with his friends and his family, doing what he loved to do, what we loved to do, and doing it together.

the second,

injury is a huge part of the professional sport of Rodeo. and not like baseball or even football no, instead of the strained elbow you have the dislocated shoulder, instead of the occasional blown out knee, you have the occasional paralysis from the waist/neck down. it's a rough way of life and my dad bore the scars, worked through the life-long re-accruing pains, and carried around the internal medals of a life on the road riding wild, untrained, bucking horses. a couple plates and several screws in an ankle and a huge plate and several more screws to reconstruct his hip to name a few. 

he never had them removed, that would mean another surgery and more recovery time when he couldn't work or compete or snowboard (yeah, he was also a great snowboarder late in life), he's buried with those war medals pinned to his bones and the stripes and bars cut into the uniform of his earthly body, just as i will be with mine someday. since the plate and screws take the place of an important and now invalid bone in the function of my left eye they'll stay there. it might sound strange, but it's another connection with him that i cherish; like our love of living on the road, drinking coffee, listening to Johnny Cash, and resonating with the comedy of TV Land.

the ending.

 i earned these medals in "the line of duty" working a trade that my dad taught and passed onto me and i earned them working in his stead. my friend Joshua is fond of calling me "Carlos" or "Carlitto" and explained that he does because my name and my fathers are the same in their translation "Man, Free Man, Strong Man" i know that he was all of these and i strive to be, in my own way, in my own time, for him and for myself and for my community of friends and family.