“The Rules Have Changed Today
I Have No Place to Stay
The Lord Has Flown Away...
My Tears, Have Come and Gone
Oh My Lord, I Have to Roam
I Have No Home! I Have No Home.”
Time Has Come Today -The Chambers Brothers
I Have No Place to Stay
The Lord Has Flown Away...
My Tears, Have Come and Gone
Oh My Lord, I Have to Roam
I Have No Home! I Have No Home.”
Time Has Come Today -The Chambers Brothers
CROSSING ZION
- by Keith M Johnson
It
gets interesting when you start talking about “home” because Betty is
from a spot on the coast of Washington where her people hunted whales,
fished, dug clams, and gathered plants for the past 2000 or so years.
She can show you the exact spot on the beach where her grandmother
taught her to weave cedar baskets. You can walk along the rocky shores
and sea stacks of the Pacific Ocean where she ran as a child to get away
from her dad. This log is where she sat with her grandfather and talked
about life and love. And then there’s me. I am part Finn, Swiss and
everything else European. I’d like to say I’m part Italian, to give
myself a sexier ring, but it’s probably not true. Maybe I’m a bit Greek:
kind of chiseled from the statue of David…yes…that’s it. I get
Sophocles’s tragedies like he was one of those smart dudes I taught at
the Super Max. But the truth is, my dad’s father came to Washington
State to log trees, and if he hadn’t drank himself to death, he probably
would have logged every tree his crew could get their saws on. There’d
be nothing left of Washington’s old growth. It would be a barren
wasteland of spindly third growth junk trees. My grandpa was a tough
man. A good guy. He just liked booze more than his kids and wife. I met
him once. He came out of his dark cave to sign a card for my dad. It was
Christmas. His hands were shaking so bad he couldn’t hold the pen
steady, so he just signed the card “X.” He smelled of bacon grease, body
odor, and booze. The home was a tiny log cabin stacked full of junk. I
was probably five at the time. It is my only memory of the man who
raised my dad. I do remember his red eyes were moist and held a sorrow
I’ve come to know too well. He died in his early fifties. Booze and
failure killed him.
The point of this stirring preamble being: when it comes to finding a home, I’m wide open. I doubt there’s a place on earth where I would walk up and say, “Yes…this is where I come from. Bury me here.” Kent, Washington? When I was a boy 13,000 people lived there. We were a cow town on the outskirts of the giant metropolis of Seattle (population 500,000). Now Kent looks like any other place along the overpopulated I-5 corridor…box stores, Dollar Stores, car dealers, and strip malls. As the saying goes, “home is where the heart is,” and to be frank, my heart beats calmly next to Betty’s skin. As I contemplate my future as an unknown writer trying to find an audience who gets the joke, I keep thinking maybe some day I’ll stumble into a town and go, “Let’s move here…and how about we rent first.” But then the phone rings and my youngest grand child is breathing loudly, waiting for me to say, “Hey! What’s going on?” The next morning Betty calls me all sleepy and starts telling me about her day on the reservation. My polar opposite, she has three things she wants to get done before night fall. I think fifty things done before noon would make up a somewhat normal day. If I am a certifiable type A, she is the quintessential type B. The problem is, I cannot think of a home anywhere on the planet without her…and if home is some spot near the grandkids, dark, gray, rain soaked, bone chilling with only some potatoes and canned salmon to live on, so be it. I’ve had my palaces without a lover in my arms. I’ve had the glory of championships without someone in my bed to share my happiness. I’ve opened bills alone. I’ve celebrated victories alone. There is no joy when the lights go out and you have no one to snuggle up to. Yes, I can live the Spartan life, the warrior life. I can live in a cave or a castle…it’s all the same without love. I’ve walked in some of the world’s finest cathedrals, castles, and hotels and I’ve walked the stark corridors of the Super Max, entered the cold pods of the damned and forgotten…and in each and every one of those “homes” the men who had someone to love and care about, were the happiest of the earth’s chosen souls.
— Keith Johnson at Arco, Lago di Garda, Italia.
The point of this stirring preamble being: when it comes to finding a home, I’m wide open. I doubt there’s a place on earth where I would walk up and say, “Yes…this is where I come from. Bury me here.” Kent, Washington? When I was a boy 13,000 people lived there. We were a cow town on the outskirts of the giant metropolis of Seattle (population 500,000). Now Kent looks like any other place along the overpopulated I-5 corridor…box stores, Dollar Stores, car dealers, and strip malls. As the saying goes, “home is where the heart is,” and to be frank, my heart beats calmly next to Betty’s skin. As I contemplate my future as an unknown writer trying to find an audience who gets the joke, I keep thinking maybe some day I’ll stumble into a town and go, “Let’s move here…and how about we rent first.” But then the phone rings and my youngest grand child is breathing loudly, waiting for me to say, “Hey! What’s going on?” The next morning Betty calls me all sleepy and starts telling me about her day on the reservation. My polar opposite, she has three things she wants to get done before night fall. I think fifty things done before noon would make up a somewhat normal day. If I am a certifiable type A, she is the quintessential type B. The problem is, I cannot think of a home anywhere on the planet without her…and if home is some spot near the grandkids, dark, gray, rain soaked, bone chilling with only some potatoes and canned salmon to live on, so be it. I’ve had my palaces without a lover in my arms. I’ve had the glory of championships without someone in my bed to share my happiness. I’ve opened bills alone. I’ve celebrated victories alone. There is no joy when the lights go out and you have no one to snuggle up to. Yes, I can live the Spartan life, the warrior life. I can live in a cave or a castle…it’s all the same without love. I’ve walked in some of the world’s finest cathedrals, castles, and hotels and I’ve walked the stark corridors of the Super Max, entered the cold pods of the damned and forgotten…and in each and every one of those “homes” the men who had someone to love and care about, were the happiest of the earth’s chosen souls.
