Tell me stories, I called to the hobo
Stories of old, I smiled to the hobo
Stories of cold, I wept to the hobo
As he stood before my fleeting house
- Morning Glory, Tim Buckley
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. “
Ulysses , Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1. Telemachus Wakes While Waiting
Well everyone’s got something to hide and everyone waits. Everyone yearns for something that is just a little out of reach. Heads spin. Sometimes seasons forget to end and they seem to go on and on almost forever. In the first months of 1969 anticipated tree buds hesitated in making their appearance until they got the “all clear” sign. Nothing wanted to change. Failed poets made up songs about the great longing, being rocks and became stars .The silence of singing voices from the sky and the absence of visual feathered formations coasting north underneath the heavens were recorded in journals as potential apocalyptic signs. Punxsutawney Phil slept in that February although he was usually punctual in emerging onto his red carpet stroll singing “I got you Babe” over and over. Most prognosticators of that era focused on hoping for the end of war, poverty and racism. They didn’t end . Jake just waited as songs continuously blared out from radio and stereos seen and unseen like some preprogrammed soundtrack following him , keeping him company and keeping him from going legally insane.
He wondered and wrote about Yastrzemski and a few of his bean town buddies patiently waiting for the gates of the diamond cathedrals to be thrown open, their heaven only a Texas leaguer away. Meanwhile few fledgling music promoters scouted clear hillsides in Bethel, NY and a couple of potential moon walkers were cosmically participating in the great wait for winter’s end. Something was in the air. He thought of Dylan, Bob that is nasaling “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Then the Silence. The universe appeared to crawl extra slowly in the stillness of longest nights ever recorded. Seconds eventually became minutes that evolved into hours when the sun gradually made her tortoise like adieu. Looking through the windows even the snow was imperceptible. Everything turned to black. In the day’s wake his sacred secret ritual of securing the spiral bound notepad that would become the recipient of his sunset matins opened slowly and solemnly with the precision of a high memorial mass. The cold empty darkness of his room became the Manresa cave where he immersed himself in this sacred requiem that lasted until the morning sun’s rays seeped slowly through the partly closed blinds. A lonely candle his only warmth and light to see .Some nights the pen poured until he ran dry. Whispering…
“Libera me, Domine .”
He kept scribbling and sketching a Lennon line over and over
“Words flew like endless rain into a paper cup.”
“Words flew like endless rain into a paper cup.”
“Words flew like endless rain into a paper cup.”
“Words flew like endless rain into a paper cup.”
And on and on and on ….
No thing would change his world. Not one soul, not best friends or priests would ever read a word of what thoughts were jammed into the limited lines on paper. Another voice in the wilderness was heard calling in the great distance. He sensed it and thought he heard it but he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was that midnight madness moving in to take over again.
Telephones what good are they? Poor substitutes for replacing paper and personal connection and they are watched hoping for a signal of a message of salvation. Cassady, also known to a select few as “Sundance”, reached out with a message through long lines from a far away land called Connecticut.
“It’s time.”
In the solitude of his room Jake was by himself but not alone as the notebook welcomed what he wrote…
