754...

754...
Originally uploaded by rod lewis

It’s been several years since I turned on a TV. Even when I was on my bike ride a few weeks ago, and spent several nights in hotels, I never turned on the TV. This is not a judgment call or statement at all, but I always feel like I’m wasting time. I used to waste a lot of time. I’d feel like sitting for a moment and turn on the tv, and a moment would turn into a few hours. I never really made a decision to stop watching. I just gradually turned it on less. Thus, I only rarely wish I had at least an antennae just in case I want to see something.
When I was a kid, I cut grass to make some money. I always saved for the guitar acquisition. Back then, cutting grass paid a lot less than now, and a descent guitar cost more than it does now. Often I cut several neighborhood yards a day. One of the most vibrant memories of things tied together for me as a child involves baseball and cutting grass. As a matter of fact, those two things make up the bulk of my memories of a few years of my childhood. My neighbor and I played ball in the side yard everyday, invisible man games, homerun derby, run-down, etc. And we collected baseball cards. The rest of my time, as I remember it, was spent cutting grass.
The two activities collided in the days leading to Hank Aaron’s matching and breaking Babe Ruth’s career homerun record. Even in those day’s I didn’t have a lot of tolerance for just sitting in front of the TV, so about the only time I watched ballgames was when something big was about to happen. Correct or not, (it was early April, and apparently after dark), I remember rushing through a lawn to try and finish before the Braves v Dodgers game began. As a ten year-old, I thought the world would explode when Aaron hit #715. Imagine someone breaking a record set by the fabled giant back before time began. Here was a black man from Alabama actually making people angry at the prospect of breaking a white man’s record. It was a glorious moment to witness.
So here I am today with no cable or antenna, watching the one sentence inning reports on ESPN dot com. Once again shrouded in controversy, this time, concerning doping, Barry Bonds is poised to tie Hank.
So far he struck out swinging in the first inning and popped out to second in the third.
Do you feel the excitement? I think I’ll go cut the grass.

maximum security

maximum security
Originally uploaded by rod lewis

I was in prison again this morning. No matter how many times I go in there, the feel is always a bit jolting. Security at the gate is really not much different than an airport, except that they don’t search your stuff. You just can’t take anything in. My guitar was on the manifest, so it slid through the X-ray. I asked if it had any broken braces, but the radiologist acted as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
This morning, I thought symbolically about several routine things. When I sign in, they take my driver’s license and replace it with a generic visitor’s pass through a drawer in a steel wall. Behind the tinted, double-paned, bulletproof glass, I can see the vague silhouette of the officer taking my identity. A state seal replaces my smiling mug, “visitor” replaces my name, and I’m sent down a long tunnel to the “yard.” Doors mysteriously buzz, unlatch and slide open in front of me and slam shut with echoes behind before the next door opens.
In the yard is the beautiful desert island landscaping I’ve told you about, surrounded by concrete with white lines upon which the prisoners always have to walk in single file. The island is beautiful, but symbolically it says, “in the middle of the razor wire, steel and concrete, there is an oasis of sand and cacti.” This is assuredly a dry and thirsty land.
This morning, there were a couple dozen guys standing on the line at attention with duffel bags beside them listening to instructions at 110db from a tiny 20-something lady.
Inside again, I learned that those guys were all being transferred to another institution. Everything they needed is in the bag. I mentioned that it must be rough being shuffled around all over the state at the whim of an unknown decision maker. Another prisoner said, “no, they’re probably excited it will be a change and give them a bit of time alone in the process.”
I thought about how sad it is that we usually have to be broken and wounded quite deeply before we realize that we’ve got nothing to lose. Is there an irony in that prisoners are surrendered and willing to being moved around, while those of us who are truly free to be moved are chained to things and places and way’s of life and day-timers, and corporate ladders? Perhaps we require instructions at 110db from a tiny, sassy, 20-something lady rather than the breezy whisper that rustles the leaves but barely rustles our starched shirts.
I talked with the guys, sang some songs with them. I made my way back through the yard, past the desert, through the tunnel. My name was returned to me, and my face replaced the state seal. The remote doors mysteriously unlatched and crashed before and behind me, and I made my way back to my truck. I mysteriously unlatched the locked door with the key fob in my pocket, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot. I started when the doors automatically locked when I took my foot off the brake.

margin

margin
Originally uploaded by rod lewis

Hey Kids! I'm home. Yoo-hoo (sung with a falling minor third), anyone home? Anybody miss me? Yoo-hoo!?

I arrived home in the wee hours of twilight, still frozen from the Great Smoky Mountains.

I started this trip with "cool change" by Little River Band as my soundtrack opener. "and now that my life is so pre-arranged, I know that it's time for a cool change."
Many songs came and went as I rode my 3,700 miles. They seemed to change with the culture and landscape. On a trip this long, some things morph gradually, but there are also geographic factors that cause rapid adjustments. On a single, long, straight rode, I experienced the Mississippi river culture with egrets and alligators, and continued into the foothills in Tennessee. Accents, idioms, dress, and way of life morph.
Descending into the piedmont from Asheville, after riding in the chilly Smokies, I could feel the heat of the south, unencumbered by elevation, literally climbing my body as I descended a couple thousand feet in a matter of minutes.

Everywhere I went, I came to realize that what I was searching for was room. Margin. "now that my life is so pre-arranged..."

When your surfaces are machined to micro tolerances, there has to be some superimposed margins. A bit of room for the lubrication to circulate.
For the last 17 days, I found my tolerances so wide that my gears wobbled and my bearings rattled. And it felt good.
Now I feel I'm in a better position to secure what needs to be, and to allow play where it is so desperately necessary.

Thank you more than I could ever express to Allison, Jack, Will, and Molly for sacrificing so that I could experience this wonderful gift

life story

life story
Originally uploaded by rod lewis

Hey kids! I've finally found internet again. In a tiny cheap (read, very cheap) roadside motel in Tupelo, Mississippi.
We rode from Jackson (hotter than a pepper sprout) to Tupelo on the Natchez Trace Parkway, a National Park. We arrived here at 2:00am starving, so we went, of course, to Waffle House, where the next-door business' sign could be seen through the condensation on the window.
I thought it was very apt, because if life IS a story, the title is definitely "cash", (or lack thereof).
also, please don't forget that I was in Jackson at 6:00pm, and thought of and referenced another Cash.

our server was a perfectly round, quite pretty girl, whose waist size could be measured by multiplying her height by πr2. She was so sweet, sugar wouldn't melt in her mouth. Her name is Melissa, so my inner soundtrack immediately swithed from Johnny and June, and Van Morrison, back to the Allman Bros.