Old Soul Digging for Bones
These words of Robert Service have stayed with me ever since
I read them as a callow lad hopping my first freight,with a dog eared copy of On the Road stashed in my ruck-sack along with the complete works of Robert Service.
It's a race that can't sit still and so
They break the hearts of kith and kin and
Roam the world at will."
The Stella Hotel-China Town, singing accappella under the lamp post on Grant and Green; 444 Columbus-North beach, Coffee and Confusion, Mike's Pool Hall, Broadway, Gino & Carlos, Green Street; Yogi; Marsha; Suzanne; Shirley; Gut; The Kirkland Hotel (aka Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Girls and Boys), the Longshoreman's Hall, Avalon Ballroom, Gino, Steve, Charlie; Fillmore Ballroom, S.F. General Hospital, 850 Bryant Street, Page Street, Height Street, Clayton, easy money, Waller St., Dino, Paul, Jim, John, Dickey, Bill, Divisadero Street, Parnassus, Cole, Ashbury, Haight St. Telegraph Ave....The Psychedelic Shop; Joel, Barbie, the donut shop on Stanyon St.; San Francisco General Hospital; the sweet smell of incense, and ganja; ”Sweet Baby Jane" "Strictly Fourth Street" "Hari Krishna, Hari Ramma Hari Hari, Ramma Ramma" Krishna Krishna; Strawberry Fields; Patti; Jani; Susie; Carolyn; Tommy; Bob, Judy; "Don't You Want Somebody to Love, Don't You Need Somebody to Love"; Concerts on the Panhandle, and Love, Love, Love, Love. Asahi beer, Dark Port Wine, Red Mountain, Marijuana, Morning glory seeds, LSD, Peyote, DMT, DET, nicotine, crystal, and knee buckling brown...junk....all of it....opened windows -not doors - for me. I wasn't allowed to go in - just to get a glimpse - a taste really...and then back to where I was. Not transported, only tempted...and teased then ultimately disappointed. Left with a living Hepatitis memory these forty years later. Worth it? I hope so....its what I've got to show for all of that time.
Could not get away from Sacramento fast enough after high school.....ran away to the army and Japan....which for this pimply faced small town kid turned out to be a XXX rated theme park.....oh dear me.....I came home a full on alcoholic having missed the opportunity of a lifetime....Full of confusion, anger, and regret and loneliness..Really lost in the wild, and scared as a child with death constantly looking me square in the eye of my soul....I didn't fit any better those years later than when I left...if anything I was more directionless.....more disconnected...more blank.... I saw the faces of my parents and my friends, but I couldn't see their love when it was right before my eyes....or wrapped in my arms...I am sorry, so very sorry....
Many miles, and many trips since my first freight train hop into Arizona from California, and on to Old Mexico....sleeping under the stars, listening to the surf just yards away....alert for the Federal Police who might decide to clear the beach of vagrants....Many loves and many tears...new lives born...and far too many lives lost. Too many baby souls given over to the green machine.... and souls lost to the rush of Methadrine, or the bark of an anonymous gun....Too many baby souls caged behind bars of steel and walls of concrete..... Too much innocence squandered on the alter of non-specific free floating mendacity and cupidity......aimlessly searching without a compass...without a map..."like a rolling stone with no direction known",.....So many, lost, crushed, trampled, by disillusionment - the black dog of despair - taken over really - by the author of the phantasmagorical tour into the bowels of hell.
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy.
And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain.
William Blake
"When I was a little boy, then my mother told me, 'Kings and Queens have a royal love that you will never know dear'...Now I am older man and I have seen life first hand, all men are but thieves and kings, all man is but one man"; with a tip of the hat to Hank Z. (Sacramento, circa '63,) who taught me the song that contained these lines.
I learned this song by Kris Kris Kristofferson about the time I met Sarah Miller in a state hospital on the coast of North California....the mother of our children and perhaps my first true love.....
And to quote that venerable and sagacious chronicler of the human experience, Jerry Garcia; "What a long strange trip it has been".
Peace, Love, Courage and Joy for all who pass this way.
Love, Quinton
