The circle of Life, the Great Circle, refers to the idea that what goes around, comes around. Thus do we celebrate the Circle of Time. And tomorrow will be the 31st anniversary of the birth of my son. It isn't actually very far, by today's standards, to the place where my boy lives. But in terms of emotional impact, and emotional pain, well.... ya can't beat a birthday to bring a guy down. I know that if I was 55, which I am, and my son was 31, which he is.. I'd be a bit depressed. This concept of Time as a bringer of death and such can be a real bummer. Time, in so many other circles, is quite benevolent. Time brings us compost, which is about death and about life... The metaphors can go on for eons. November is a difficult month. It's my father's birth month, my son's birth month, my best friend's death month, and by now most of the colrs are depleted in the leaves in the woods where I might go to work thru the blues. So I find that I listen more to the blues now, in the car, in the house, sometimes in the studio if the radio reception is good. The beer I drink is a form of composting, with a specific construct of flavors, odors and color in mind. Maybe. Or it's just some strange tea that got lucky when the honey was full of just the right yeasts and we got beer. What a great idea, the idea that beer is the creation of chaos.

The thing is, chaos is like the lesbian father you never had. It's hard to look at, but still somehow interesting. We get confused when we speak of chaos and randomness gets in there. That's not the same as chaos, mostly, because randomness somehow never spells the first three books of the Old Testament, even though chaos says it someday should. Why is it that the one time when all them monkeys finally type out the complete works of Shakespeare is always conveniently sometime in the far flung future? Why not TODAY? And they can't give you an answer. Miracles are always 'someday'. So it's not random. It's chaotic.

The idea that an intelligent design is responsible for the universe and the conditions which made life possible all like dancing angels on the point of a pin means that selective evolution needs to sit in the back of the bus just jerks my chain. Breathe a minute. In your experience, what has seemed intelligent to you? Every time you think something or someone made sense, it was because it cut thru the crap. It made it simpler, easier to look at and easier to think about. Intelligence is making complex things simpler until they become one tiny little truth and you disappear. Not blow up, no collaterol damage, just things get simpler. Ultimately they become so simple it's just black and white, like that button in the hippie shop. and then maybe a form of grey.

But when there is only one there can be no time because time is a measure relating two things, generally something moving or becoming at a constant rate. Like a pendulum swinging, maybe in London. The thing is that movement defines and develops the sense of time. But thanks to entropy we can be sure that for this particular set of parts, time winds down. It's been a rough year, and time has wound rather down for so many who could have wisely used just a bit more time. Then I look around and see a garden where once was sand and a new roof over my bed and I wonder why I feel just a little blue when all I have to do is think about all my lost loves for the next couple of days. It's a choice, I could just think about how neat it is to have a non-leaking roof, but for some reason I find myself thinking about non-functional, non corporal forms. Like any farmer, I know that from a pile of shit can come a nice crop of squash, even if you never planted squash ever in the vast expanse of time, yet there it is, that giant vine, all droopy and dripping and hanging. That vine got one fruit, one strange fruit of pale skin and green stripes and nothing else. Well, a few flowers, but for all its vast expanse it only got one fruit. Life is funny sometime. Now the real trick is to plant the seed from this strange fruit and see what comes up next year.

Living in the country sure can play tricks on a man, tricks I say! But it wasn't a trick. No, it was me own sweet Jessie, calling to find out if some mail had come. So I got that going for me. And tomorrow I'll be thinking about Dad, and Larry and Jon and all the rest of them... Bernice and Shiela and now Mom's in the hospital with pneumonia and pleurisy... ye gods, doesn't the fun never stop? Well, we knew the job was dangerous when we took it.