writer

So, $600.00 smak-a-roos?

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I read a quote this morning from Woody Guthrie.

“Just decide what you want to write about. Then you decide why you don’t want to write about it. Then you climb gently and sweetly up to your paper, and with a pen, pencil or typewriter thoroughly cocked and primed … just go ahead and WRITE IT.”

This is the third day I have woke up at almost 6 a.m. on the dot. I love waking up early before everyone else. Today what I want to write about is writing. What I don’t want to write about is anxiety and depression … and finding a way to fund-raise for projects. Or just the business side of writing at all. What I certainly don’t want to write about is AI writing. So lets save writing about Artificial Intelligence for another day and write about anxiety, depression, writing and money. Let’s call that supporting the arts. The money part, that is. One of the first books I can remember reading all the way through was Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm. I was about seventeen when I read it. The reason I mention that I read it all the way through was because in my schooling, not once did I read a book cover to cover and not once did I write a paper. I did what is called fall through the cracks. I quit school at sixteen and got a General Education on Decency. GED.

When I found at age seventeen or so L.S.D., Native American books, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead … reading was not something I was into. Listening certainly was my way of learning and to make things easier Seven Arrows had pictures and a teaching story that has stuck with me all the way to where I sit, even now, cuddled up to my laptop sweetly writing just as Woody Guthrie suggested in that Instagram Post from the Woody Guthrie center. That post with the quote was the first thing I saw today on a screen. Wake and scroll some might call it.

The teaching story in the book Seven Arrows is a public domain story that has been passed down from several different sources. It is a classic hero’s journey story where the hero in the story, a small mouse, leaves the comforts of home to travel down life’s long lonesome highway straight into the riding off into the sunset motif. Transformation with a happy ending. The story is like one of those old AAA Triptick flippable road-maps, or for the new generation of folks, the story is like Google Maps for what happens when you decide to finally do that thing that you have just got to do against all advice. Partly, anxiety can be from not knowing what is going to happen. Depression can come from dealing with the result of what happened and not knowing how to navigate the truth of the matter, when life shows you the raw details of just how mean and nasty this world and people can be. Especially to seekers and visionaries.

One of the life lessons to be learned from the story is when the little mouse finally up and leaves the small community of other mice and goes off in the direction of what has been driving the little mouse crazy. It was a roaring sound. It was that rolling thunder of thoughts that can drive a person crazy when they just got to get the fuck outta whatever they might be stuck at. The mouse runs off, leaving its friends behind and then something wild and wonderful happens. The little mouse comes back to the circle of friends and finds that all the friends are just the same and now suspicious of the little mouse. The, You Can’t Go Home Again, idea. Back when I was doing acid and being all hippie this story meant something different than it does now. What that story is now and has become over time is more like a mirror. Every time I read it, it does more to reflect what I am doing now, like what am I thinking about when I read it. Where am I in the Medicine Wheel of life.

I think I should have been a Psychologist. Or maybe a Spiritual Leader or something, however, the last thing I would want to do is be all groovy and weird or creepy and cheesy. Seven Arrows is a Native American “spiritual” book. Many of the books that I actually read after leaving school were what would be called “spiritual.” Back in my Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Bob Marley days, I was losing my religion so far as to say and needed something else to guide me into what was soon going to be one of the hardest, and sometimes when reflecting back on it, embarrassing times in my life. When manic depression gets a hold of ya, thoughts and prayers, just let go and let God just isn’t enough. At least not for me. I needed a road map to show me how to get back from the end. In my very humble opinion, this is what I find listening to many younger folks now. They lack the connective stories and life lessons that can come from teaching stories and mentoring.

I went into the kitchen a minute ago and had a thought about one of my other favorite teaching stories. It seems I learn a-lot from rodents. It is a Sufi teaching story, called The Cat Swami and the Rats, told by Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. It’s a story about a sly cat in a grain house that tricks rats to trust him. To make a great story short, he ends up eating them one by one. What I learned from that story is to not take the guru spiritual thing too seriously and always questions the motives of anything I take on to be my guide. Back in my day, new age religion was back in town and everyone in my circle was doing something with crystals, gurus, goddess stuff, mandalas, magnetic channeling of Thomas Merton, drums, drugs, acid whatever … palm reading, tarot cards.

So, to get back to what I don’t want to write about and do what to write about, I enjoy telling my life story, so as it helps others who may be questioning their faith, or thinking about doing drugs or goddess forbid, thinking about killing themselves. I can’t really talk about that subject because I never got that depressed and when talking about that subject, I can not offer anything except get expert help. But what I can talk about is transformation and going head first into places that you can not go back to, or even look back at, until you actually do that thing that some folks call, kill your self. The ego. The self. That sound inside your head that takes you places that sometimes you can not control. And that is what I think LSD taught me the most, was that I was not in control. Anxiety is sometimes that feeling of not being in control and wanting to be. To a control freak, LSD might help because for many hours, something else is guiding your mind, or at least has a grip on it and no matter how much you think you can, you can not make it stop.

My Son, who was eighteen at the time, took a whole bunch of mushrooms and ended up at the hospital getting his stomach pumped. He blacked out and was uncontrollable and somewhere in the trip, he broke one of his teeth. He told me when I asked him what he learned from his trip that he would not do mushrooms again. I told him good idea, but that doing something like that for many cultures is not something all that out of the ordinary. He is living with Native People out in Oklahoma and one of his Elders suggested he should visit the Peyote Church and do his trip with folks who know how to handle an eruption such as he experienced.

As a Father, I made a rule with my kid that we would not talk about drugs and smoking weed all the time. Kinda that, “I don’t want to hear about it, I am your Dad.” Like I don’t want to watch him climb up a very tall tree, or climb down the path of a 300 foot log slide that is so steep that you can’t see the bottom. He did that once. I had to walk away. I walked away from smoking weed, LSD and other intoxicants such as those drugs to work with kids and eventually work for the railroad. So let’s cut to the chase. Let’s get right down in the dirt about what I really don’t want to write about but I do and that is making money from writing.

I am a musician as well as a writer. I am also an Outlaw, but that is another topic I want to write about. Money. Yuk, I am an Anti Capitalist, so making money requires a serious discussion on commodities and the movement of cash through a system of economics. One of the ways you make money is by using a tool, and somehow possessing the tool makes you a crafts-person, and then you go and get a job and then the money comes rolling in. Like, busking for example. Standing out in the street where people are and using your guitar or whatever and singing a tune and the folks empty their pockets of spare change into a hat or some sort of bucket. But who has spare change anymore and what tool does a writer use? And who wants to “commodify” their hobby or turn their hobby in the arts into a job? Henry David Thoreau in his book, Walden Pond, uses his first chapter as a tool to let his critics and readers know what he did with his money all the way down to the penny. My dream would be to make about $600.00 dollars a month doing what I love. That doesn’t to me seem to much of a wild hair up my ass or what some might call a get rich quick scheme or even a hair brained idea.

Over the last few days of mentioning on Facebook that there is a way to support my writing fund, I raised $30 dollars. $10 dollars from three people. So in the vein of Thoreau, let’s talk. What would I do with $600.00 dollars and how would I make it? And even more important … you won’t get help unless you ask … so, please support my work and that means now you have a responsibility and you will have to use a tool, such as a debit card and Pay Pal. And see how cringe this whole topic can be? I am three hours into just this post and I will edit it and tweak it a bit. By the time I post this, I will have worked six or more hours with my laptop, mind and soul and be pretty wore out. I will think to myself and worry about some of the topics covered. Should I have said that stuff about suicide? And then I’ll hit the publish button and throw my work out into the world for all to see and that is somewhat of a liability and opening myself up for critical judgment. That is what this work is. Writing. It’s no joke and can be hard and exhausting.

So, $600.00 smak-a-roos? Where I am living now, I have health coverage because of socialized medicine. My rent is very low and I don’t consume that much. I like the small things in life such as rocks and feathers. So, my money goes pretty far. I am blessed and humbled by being taken care of by my situation in life. I am not rich by any means. I smoke and drink coffee. So, that is the worst place YOUR money might go. Into my belly might be another place. I may use some of it to support another writer or musician. If I do then we would have to have another conversation of circles and money moving in a localized free market system. Then we would be right back to square one talking about money. So, let’s get back to talking about the things we don’t want to write about. Politics, Religion and Drugs! Shall we?

I don’t like labeling things. Like socialist or spiritual or crazy. When things get a label, things are sent into the generalization bin and run a risk of being “too” something. Too radical, too religious, that kinda talk. One of the things I hope I can achieve by telling my thoughts like I do, is that it will help somebody get through life, whatever this is. I borrowed that from Kurt Vonnegut’s son. Vonnegut said something close to that was one of his favorite quotes. So to label myself, to generalize myself into a pigeon hole and paint myself with a wide brush, I might suggest that I am a spiritual person who believes in cooperative social circles that are created and maintained for the necessity of providing help or in the service of need. I would also call myself a person who has mental health issues because I have learned to deal with my manic/depressive mental illness. I am a fearless person sometimes and now we are back at that word, Outlaw.

I don’t have any tattoos and I don’t use drugs. So how could that make me an Outlaw? Well, I am not an Outlaw, but Willie Nelson is and Waylon Jennings was, no? There is a real gang from where I am from called the Outlaws Motor Cycle Club, MC. They are what is called 1 percenters because they represent the 1 percent of people in this world who do not give a fuck at all and will do whatever they want, whenever they want, and make no bones about it. I am not that. I am the other side of the spectrum from that. I am more like an Anarchist. And these days, being a socialist or anything in the shades of what some might call red can get you killed, or silenced, or removed from your position. That is why I like the word Outlaw. I live outside the law of whatever it might be that is said to be the rule. That is why I as a rule, don’t plan to make my blog a subscriber per month kinda thing. I have been told by some that that is the way to go. I would rather state my need and see if I can get that need met. We all need money in this pre-apocalypse clepto-capitalist global economy. No? I am non-violent as well and dedicated to non-violence almost as a religion.

So here we are at the conclusion of this post. Now I will wrap it all up and move on so I can get to the editing and tweaking part of this work. What I wanted to write about was faith, mental health and drugs. What I didn’t want to write about was money and the need for it. I did get to name drop some of my favorite famous people. Willie Nelson’s recording Red Headed Stranger got me through a divorce and that leads to another thing I wanted to write about and that was teaching stories and mentors. I hope you made it through this OK. Any questions? Ideas? Leave a comment and don’t forget to subscribe … (hehe). In conclusion, see ya soon and chow chow … Auf Wiedersehen –

Tschüss!

John Paul
Lustenau, Austria

circa 1990 in Cherokee Park, Louisville

Souvenirs

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Memories –

Once upon a time Bill Smith, aka “billy lee” a Louisville poet and writer was leaving to go to Ann Arbor for school. He and his wife was moving way too much stuff to a small college dorm and had rented a moving truck. They asked me to tag along to drive eight hours or so, to help with the move. I was in the truck with another feller and Bill and his wife was in a car. He told me he would buy us dinner. So, off to we went and Bill handed me and the driver of the moving truck ten bean burritos from Taco Belle and off we went to Michigan.

Once I fired a steamboat all the way to West Virginia from Louisville, Kentucky. It took seven days to get there. Something like that.

Once upon a time, I called Sun Ra’s house in Philly, to talk with Marshall Allen about visiting him and the Arkestra. He said come on over.

Went to Philly another time and visited a Sufi mystics fellowship and read some works he wrote that were not published. Ate mung bean curry for the first time. Prayed in his mosque.

Once in NYC, I met Hunter Thompson out on the balcony of the place where a group of beat poets were giving a presentation. He stole my lighter after asking where I was from. I told him, Louavul. He said, “yep, you are.” I didn’t know who he was at the time.

Me and Mark Anthony Mulligan drove to Leitchfield, KY once for fun. He was a homeless person and songwriter, artist who loved old gas station signs. We ate at the all you can eat Chinese buffet and then went home.

Hung out with Wendell Berry once in his truck. My son rode in the back with the dogs. We talked about railroading and sheep. My Son ran off into the woods and found some old glass bottles and a turtle shell.

Went to a biker bar in the West End of Louisville with my Step-Father and Mother once. The women were supposed to tack their panties on the door if it was their first time visiting. My Mom went to the bathroom and took off her grandma panties and put them up. She was my hero. I was maybe twelve at the time.

Saved a train hobo kids life once. He was in Nashville, TN. looking to get the hell out of town. I told him he could ride my train. He was somewhat delirious and overheated and needed help. He rode my train in the second engine and drank water and slept all night with his two pit bulls. I gave him my Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches.

Once upon a time, I saw Burrell Farnsley sitting with the bronze statue of his father, Mayor Charles Farnsley. He was sitting on the bench talking with his Dad, or so I found out when I asked him if he wanted a ride. He told me, “yes, let me finish talking with my Father.” Burrell used to come to a book store I worked at and bring muffins and the New York Times to the owner.

Once upon a time, in communication with Rumi translator and poet Coleman Barks, Coleman asked if, “white boys can sing the blues?” I told him that they could and that the blues were blue. He sent me a story about when he used to walk the wharf in Chattanooga, Tennessee and see people dancing on the Delta Queen Steamboat.

Was a judge in the Hobo Olympics out in Mt. Shasta, California once. Met guitar Whitey, he was an old Bo’ from back in the day. Took my son with me so he could see rebellious people. Met Utah Phillip’s Son and we played a gig in the town of Dunsmuir.

Can You Bodensee The Mountains?

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All is quiet. And I mean so quiet that I can hear that 440 electrical buzz sound in my head. This is so different than the airplanes rushing overhead every thirty seconds and a major interstate right in my backyard. My neighbors used to be The United Parcel Service by way of their world-port and my other noisy neighbor was the main traffic vein of the Eastern U.S.A, Interstate 65. There is an occasional sound of a car going down my street. There is home sounds like the sound of my laptop fan, but these sounds are the noises that I never heard before it got all quiet. This morning I woke up at 6:30. Went to bed aww, about midnight, slept all night and woke up to a dark, creaky old house suggesting to me with every step to the kitchen, that the coffee is so good. So, coffee brewing, time to roll a smoke, and pick up the cell phone and scroll the morning news paper screen.

The weather report around these parts is simple. Can you see the mountains? If you can’t see the mountains in the morning, prolly ain’t gonna be no sun all day. I do this every morning. I look out the kitchen window as I open the blinds and gaze at the far away Swiss Alps. The snow cover fluctuates from day to day. The ever changing colors are so different from the only other mountains I have ever seen. The Great Smoky Mountains are great sure, but this is another thing all together. Now that I have passed my German Language test, I think it might be time to get out and walk around some. The other day, I went fishing in lake Constance (Bodensee.)

Going fishing was the first time I had driven anywhere by myself. I woke early, got all layered up because the temperature was going to hover right around freezing for most of the day. Working as an engineer on the Steamer Belle of Louisville got me trained to handle some pretty harsh weather, but this was going to be the opposite spectrum of the heat of being a boiler fireman. I did pretty good, all for the battery powered heated vest my captain had ready for me. My captain is my wife’s best girlfriends man. And he is quite the feller. His boat is a trolling boat, nothing fancy, however we went in style with sandwiches and lots of layers to keep us warm. I didn’t bring coffee was my mistake and he forgetting the hot tea was his. We talked for eight hours or more and got to know each other pretty well. We caught eight lake trout and all of them were massive. (hehe) in eight hours we caught one what he called small, but big enough trout. To me, a lake fisherman from Kentucky used to bass, it was pretty big.

And pretty tasty I might add.

River Notes

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I am sitting in a Super 8 hotel in Gallipolis, Ohio drinking strong coffee and listening to John Hartford. Today is Monday. I had to look the date up. Last night as I came back from the Mexican restaurant with my crew, I had a thought. I got here by Steamboat, not by road. I know we are slightly down river from the Kanawha River and tied up at the Shipyard, but that is about as far as I left knowing exactly where I am.

For a week, I fired a one hundred and six year old steamboat up the Ohio River. I fancy the idea of an escape. The thought of just leaving everything behind, all that stuff following your bliss, do whatchalike and all that jazz. I am doing that. I just did it. Crossed the threshold! I did not get out of the boat. To render just a lil’ bit more from that good old quote from a river journey movie dot, dot,dot … just as Kurtz, I split from the whole fucking program a long time ago, and so it goes, and so on, I digress often.

I have a story to tell. A river story. My idear is to write a book titled, Drift. Maybe the tale of two rivers. Maybe a tale about me, John Paul, down at Rough River, Central Kentucky hiding away during the beginning of Covid. Maybe my next book will be like Kurt Vonnegut said of Slapstick …

“This is the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography.”

So, stick with me here. Follow this page, like. subscribe or, whatever. Some new material is coming soon. When I go back to my home port, I plan on organizing all this drift wood that I have collected over these 50 some odd years and make heads or tails out of this that and the other. Y’all come. Y’all come …

See ya on the boat …

JP Wright

Fireman, Str. Belle of Louisville

Ohio River Mile 604

Review of my book – Sabbatical of the Belle

Getting Ready – Chapter One

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Chapter One.

Getting ready.

He said, “well, you are free!” I was talking to my hobo, rail-yard ghost- train riding friend while standing on the backside of my workplace. A river front life saving station positioned at mile 604 at the Louisville city front on the Mighty Ohio River is where I report for duty. A cold front was moving through whipping up cold wind and waves. I said, “hey, Jonah (my son) turned eighteen yesterday …” And it was a phone call from another world, to my world. In his world he is still roaming around from siding to siding. He just bought his little Big Rock Candy Mountain. His version of Payne Hollow, Walden Pond, upstate Wisconsin. A big river follows along the backside, train tracks bordering his front.

Free? I am free, to a degree. To wonder, wait and hope that all those seeds I planted in that kid, will grow. The strategic subtle mentions. The moral to the stories. The dark places. The radical union meetings, passing motions – all that. And later I realized why I was feeling funny all day. This day would have been my twenty fifth year anniversary with his Mom. But, that is how far away from all that I am now. That date will pass by like the drift in this river. I’ll notice its passing. And as it passes, it may be useful at the time. Might pick it up out of the river of life and admire a little of its worn away usefulness. Might remember something fond of what was an entire lifetime of something loving and honorable to be. Maybe memories will flood in, resembling a town once visited, like taking an unfamiliar exit on a dark- fog filled late night highway or pondering a yellowed family vacation photo of people I have never met.

And in this new brave digital world, photos will not yellow with time. The news articles will not crumble in some stored away manila folder. Family photos may be obsolete in the next decade as computers switch to a new file format. Most of what happens in these so called end days, happens in a place where there is no darkness. And yes, that is Orwellian as fuck. AF. Just as dark as the place I would have to go to continue this prose, uninterrupted- alone and isolated for days on end. But, and most importantly, I am not in that place right now. RN. The rest of the world may, in these pandemic times, be getting a taste of what it feels like to be a writer or a creative person. Creativity strikes, like a virus, and then you are forced to live or die from a want to produce. And sometimes in that place of isolated creative fire, hours on hours going by cutting and pasting, practicing, rolling out words from a place inside you infected with a desire to walk that razor blade of vanity, you isolate. You put on that mask. You do the work of the fool.

The rest of the world may as well be writing the Newspeak dictionary! RN, AF, double plus good, LMAO, emoji this, meme this and that. Time. Dystopian times. In a week we leave on this steamboat to be gone for a week. Clickty clackity, pushing upriver. In many ways, this will be my “hearts of darkness” trip, my “never get out of the boat” moment. I have an active imagination, Y’all. I have nothing to prove, no point to make. I am leaving myth and messages on a forest path of an escape. We will be leaving from the same place Lewis and Clark once left, whitewashing their way across an unexploited Undaunted Courage.

And as I write this prose, history is being retold. His story! The winners have lost control of their narrative. Statues are being taken off pedestals. A great power shift is happening. Things are in motion that can not be undone. All the Gods and Goddesses of colonial industry have been exposed and are dead or dying. The old money can’t keep up with the new developers and their ghost armies of followers and fans. The pendulum is swinging in a violent unmanageable windstorm of change. Heroes and heroine are being defaced and new slogans quickly installed. And all this stream of conscience drifting was inspired by one phone call from a friend. A rail-yard ghost called from a far. An ol’ pal of the Kerouac suggestion of free roaming. The let’s just go and see people. The “if there is a lower class, then I am of it,” folks. This writing might as well be a middle finger to the law and order crowd, or at least, maybe, a message of warning: Your Slip Is Showing. You fascists are losing your damned minds and losing favor with a new generation of electronically educated, self inspired natives. I can hear the far off drums! Can you?

John Paul Wright

Mile 604, Ohio River

Louisville, Kentucky

20201013