Ben raised his glass, tilting it momentarily
to greet the stranger entering the bar
sunlight streamed behind the stranger
blazing to obscure any focus
of the stranger  as he turned
toward the rear of the bar,
Ben warned him
do not go in there;
you see, we are not sure what’s beyond
the dark
we can feel it
but
we do not know what it might be
or
shall be
or
even worse, could be
and
there have been several
who dared the dark
and
did not return
so
sit down here at the bar with me
have a whiskey
i prefer mine neat
come on, come on, sit here
Ben pleaded
the stranger, dressed in black
with a black stetson,
paused, turned briefly toward him
before abruptly turning back
toward the dark
and
the stranger passed from the sunlight
into the dark
Ben finished his whiskey
dropped a sawbuck on the bar
rising from his stool
he moved toward the door
and
the sunlight
laughing quietly.

The “Something Older” in the title is me. The “Something New” is not really new but several quotes from Faulkner in Martin J. Dain’s photo essay book, Faulkner’s Yoknawpatawpha County i have possessed since the early 1970’s and take off the shelf and go through every so often just to give me a moment to relax and even mediate a bit:

You must struggle, rise. But in order to rise, you must raise the shadow with you. But you can never lift it to your level. I see that now, which I did not see until I came down here. But escape it you cannot. The curse of the black race is God’s curse. But the curse of the white man is the black man who will be forever God’s chosen own because he once cursed him.

and

from Dilsey, perhaps my favorite Faulkner character, this one from The Sound and the Fury. When i read of Dilsey, i think of Vicey Shavers, the wonderful lady who cared for me when Mother did some part time work from about four years old into my teenage years:

I’ve seed de first en de last,” Dilsey said. “Never you mind me.

“First en last whut?” Frony said.

“Never you mind,” Dilsey said. “I seed de beginnin, en now i sees de endin.”

and:

Then one day the old curse of his fathers, the old haughty ancestral pride based not on any value but on an accident of geography, stemmed not from courage and honor but from wrong and shame, descended to him. He did not recognize it then.

and:

Because man’s hope is in man’s freedom, The basis of the universal truth which the writer speaks is freedom in which to hope, believe, since only in liberty can hope exist — liberty and freedom not given a man as a free gift but as a right and a responsibility to be earned if he deserves it, is worthy of it, is willing to work for it by means of courage and sacrifice, and then to defend it always.

and:

But like i said we was all busy or anyway occupied or at least interested, so we could wait. And sho enough, even waiting ends if you can jest wait long enough.

and:

…fear, like so many evil things, comes mainly out of idleness, if you have something to get into tomorrow morning  you’re too busy to pay much attention to fear. Of course, you have fears, but you have — you don’t have time to take them seriously if you have something to get up and do tomorrow. It don’t matter too much what it is…and if it’s something that you yourself believe is valid…

This post was begun five years ago. i was struggling with what to add and didn’t finish. It was automatically filed as a “draft.” i was cleaning up my files (a never-ending and hopeless endeavor), i ran across it. Reading it this morning, i realized it was a bit bold, if not downright improper, for me to try and add remarks to Faulkner’s quotes. And this morning, it seemed damn close to what i think about where we are, what we might do about it, and how i can live feeling better about me and feeling better about living amongst what we live amongst.

So i deleted references to my seventy-fourth birthday, and let Faulkner’s words speak for themselves as they have spoken to me.

Dain’s book is still in print and available. But if you care not to purchase but would like to look at some awesome photos and read some powerful words, drop by and we can go through the book together and discuss how we feel about it.

One of the many things i’ve done while hopping and hopping around in not-quite careers since i retired (that is actually completed my active duty Navy service, not retired) was as the business manager of a military contracting company, that morphed into parts of other companies three times while i as there just shy of five years. A previous business manager described the job as “selling smoke.” He wasn’t too far off.

Through the aegis of my friend since 1979, Pete Toennies, i joined the bunch after i asked help in finding my brother-in-law a job, which Pete did. i met some folks whom i still hold in high esteem.

There was Bob Ellis, who remains one of the smartest men i’ve known, a retired E3 pilot, who had incredible energy for his job, worked in difficult circumstances to win contracts against impossible odds in spite of some boot lickers between him and top management (and so, that organization finally got rid of him and suffered, losing all sorts of work. Still a terrific friend.

A bunch of other dedicated and talented people too many to list here.

But there’s this guy who was the genius in graphics design. For one contract proposal, Walker turned me into a hologram like Princess Leia. He not only was a multi-graphics wizard, he created magic.

Walker Hicks is more than magic. Like i said, he’s a wizard. He left that company shortly after i left and became the marketing manager, the art director , and the creative art director at Cali Bamboo, primarily a bamboo flooring company. He did this while running a whole bunch of creative projects on his own.

A a bunch of years ago, i was trying to compile a bunch of old 8mm family films into a long DVD. Remembering Walker’s talents i asked him if he could help. Well, Walker didn’t help. He took it on big time. His set up was archaic, capturing the movies running on an old 8mm movie projector on video, turning it into a DVD with music. Remarkable. i gave copies to a bunch of family members for a Christmas gift. They loved them.

This project led to Walker capturing family photos from the late 1800’s into digital images. Once again perfection was achieved.

Then, i began my website. Walker has been there from the beginning. He has done all of the design and graphics. He set up and then instructed me how to use the app for posting my stuff. He has continued to be remarkable in giving me help, patiently going through procedures when improved changes were made, and constantly making it all work.

Walker has become a great friend. His wife Marcie is a beautiful woman, talented in her own right and a success in a number of different ventures including graphic design. Their son Bryton is six months younger than my grandson and a fine talent in volleyball. Their dog Remi is a treat.

Recently when i was at Walker’s working on marketing my book and improving the website, Walker told me of acquiring some equipment to better and more efficiently create videos of old movies. They are an upgrade from the process he used making my DVDs.

If you have a bunch of old family movies and want to have a more permanent version you can watch on your video equipment, i would most strongly recommend you contact Walker. If you don’t believe me, below is a small section of the videos he made for me. These are mostly of my Uncle Bill’s family from Florida, visiting the Smokies with my aunt, Bettye Kate, and i’m betting the filming was done by my Uncle Snooks. The last portion is a goofy guy, Martha and Joe at Christmas. Joe, is the one who looks sort of like Dangerous Dan McGoo with that rifle.

If you would like to contact Walker about your movies or any other potential multi-media projects, i strongly recommend you do. He’s the best.

And he’s a great friend.

Contact Walker:
www.diwhy.life
diwhydotlife@gmail.com

The last poem i posted here, “fine, ” drew some unexpected reactions.

Nearly everyone who responded liked it, thought it was well written, and found it melancholy. Some thought it was closure. Some thought it was tragic. Some thought it meant i was in some dire train of thought.

Initially, i scratched my head.

i have finally accepted i am a writer. Sometimes, i’m a pretty decent writer. Sometimes, i’m not. Having escaped the word limits of print journalism, i am not terse, far from it. Occasionally, my writing is short, i hope to have deeper meaning than most of the longer stuff i write. Or, in some cases, it is more humorous shorter than longer.

My lone non-fiction book, Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings, is one of the few pieces i’ve written for a specific purpose and in its writing, morphed into more than that purpose alone. The morphing was not intentional.

My other writing nearly always begins with some strange thought, unassociated with the other things bouncing around in my head like in a pinball machine, popping into my head. When i expand on that magically appearing thought in my head, i usually have a purpose, my purpose. i am writing primarily for me.

i hope you enjoy what i write. i love to get feedback. i prefer positive feedback, but negative feedback usually, i think, makes me better. i write for you to read, yes. But i really don’t write for you. i write for me. i break a lot of rules for writing. That’s really me.

i used to think writing was a great career…if i made it a career. Never happened. i was too busy off at sea looking for Fiddler’s Green.

i used to think i had a “passion” for writing. Had it really been a passion, i would have stopped doing everything else, like living, and just write. i enjoy all of that other stuff, especially living, too much to ever do nothing but write.

Writing, for me, it’s just there, coming from something inside, a need, a desire, a never ending demand. Don’t know where it came from. Don’t know how i was infected. It’s just there. And when i’m writing, i am in my briar’s patch — ha, we’ve politically correctly taking that definition of “briar patch” out of existence, which is a dog gone shame.

When i began puzzling over the responses to “fine,” i recalled something Dave Carey said to me once a long time ago.

Dave Carey, in case you don’t remember, was a POW in Vietnam. His experience became the source of a marvelously positive motivational speech, which he turned into a book, The Ways We Choose: Lessons for Life From a POW’s Experience.

i joined Dave in the Leadership training for the West Coast and the Pacific Rim in 1985 at the Naval Amphibious School in Coronado. We were the primary Navy guys who shepherded the creation of “The Command Excellence Seminar,” for senior officers, which replaced the one-week Prospective Commanding Officer, Prospective Executive Officer Leadership, Education, and Management Training course, (a mouthful and as with nearly all things military, became PCO/PXO LMET) — hmm…perhaps that is what took that wonderfully thoughtful and useful two-day workshop into extinction: no one ever turned Command Excellence Seminar into an acronym.

When Dave retired to provide motivational speeches and work in team building and executive coaching, i followed him into the lead facilitator role of the seminar and the director of the leadership training out of the amphibious school — now folks, if you have to have a Navy twilight tour, Coronado is a great place to waltz into retirement.

After, i retired, i worked with Dave on a number of team building projects. i had written the first try at capturing Dave’s speech in print (we determined it would be better in first person, which Dave achieved a couple of years later). One team building workshop was for the Fresno Police Department. We were headed there in Dave’s car.

i asked, “Dave, when you give your speech, what do you want the audience to get out of it? What thought to you wish to convey.”

Dave drove north through the Tulare Basin of California, thinking thoughtfully before he answered.

“Well, when i first started, i had some specific points i wanted the audience to learn from the speech,” he began.

“Then, i had an engagement at a luncheon in Texas,” he continued, “At the conclusion, folks were gathering around, and this big Texan comes up to me. He shakes my hand, puts his arm around my shoulder, shakes his head knowingly, and says, ‘Dave, you know everyone gets shot down once in a while.’

“After that, i realized that folks get out of my speech what will be helpful to them. It may not be what i had intended, but it will be positive for them. And that’s enough,” Dave concluded.

When i write anything, anything, i turn to Dave’s thoughts and know i want folks to get out of what i’m writing, what will be helpful, useful to them.

That’s enough.

the candles were unlit,
white with melted wax
clinging to the sides of the pewter holders;
electricity and gas had been turned off
nigh six months ago
when he also shut down his phone,
stowing it in a box in the garage;
he had lost track of time
this late evening,
sitting in the rocking chair,
slowly rocking like the ticking of a clock
as the embers in the fire
glowed in the cold dark of the room:

he was fine.

no one had visited in quite a while,
nor had he visited anyone,
nor had anyone called
in the same period of time;

he was fine with that, too,

as no one listened to him
and
he knew what they would say
anyway.

he was fine.

he had put the dog down
‘bout the time he turned off the utilities;
the cold did not require
him to tend to the yard;
he used the toe of his left boot
to nudge the ember that had
fallen off the fire onto the hearth
back into the fire place proper;
he rocked more slowly,
nodded off.

he was fine.

he was absolutely fine.