Chasing the Light in Either Direction

Physical labor, once an invigorating elixir, is now a dummy-down venom.  My first job was moving ammonia-soaked patches of horse urine with a four-pronged pitchfork.  For some reason the sawdust changed the chemical composition into enormous ammonia cakes weighing upwards of ten pounds.  I remember the layers got more pungently nasty the closer to the barn floor I scraped.  I guess that is the way with people sometimes too.

The horseshit was a pleasantry compared to the wet chunks.  Oblong balls of perfectly formed brown matter had the occasional hay stem and very often, on a frosty morning, were still steaming from the top.  I have never observed a horse with diarrhea but I have to imagine they get it from time to time.

I was 13, maybe 14, when I would start my hitchhiking journey to a different town in Fairfield County, Connecticut.  The hour was dark when I started out chasing the day.  I had my stall assignments and knew where the wheelbarrows were.  Inevitably the horse box required a complete turnaround, like washing the sheets, the mattress pad, flipping and vacuuming the mattress and dry cleaning the dust ruffle if you have one.  Underneath the fluffy horse litter were wide barn planks, thick like stone, with years of embedded horse waste slime. 

Loading the wheelbarrow with this much information was a trick considering the hilly trek up to the manure pile.  If it tipped on our way the spill needed to be picked up.  Then it was twenty or thirty trips to the sawdust heap and smoothing out the wrinkles of fluff.  Said horse was never fully appreciative of the labor once led back into its tidy new shitting pad. 

I think my pay was $2 per stall, whole lot or not.  I didn’t mind getting up early, hitchhiking, getting dusty and smelly, or even the ammonia cushions.  I could carry on my day as if I had slept all that time.

Now, physical labor of any kind, for a sustained period of time, is like a drug with combined effects.  My body is spent, but interestingly my mind shuts off too.  Any urge to paint, write, read or think is frustratingly stifled by some inner mechanism, or the alien abduction to the golf course where chasing the light behind its mysterious hills and vines will distract me through the dreaded dusk.

 

Phew! Nothing Like a Hot Shower and a Few Pieces of Plate Waste!

What Could it Be? And Why?

 Chris you are so smaht.  It was suggested I use a potato and all I had was a pointy am so I used clay.

Lucy Johnson and Andy Kaufman

The WBCN thing got me remembering…

The Lucy Johnson Andy Kaufman story was never ravaged by the press.  Playboy mentioned it.  We went to WBCN together and were on the air with Mark.  I accompanied Andy to Letterman, and toured with him back when he was dousing audiences with donuts and cookies and milk.  He would visit me at CU where I was a college student.  My roomate, Sandy and I never stoppped laughing during those weeks when Andy was staying with me.

And it is always with disbelief and an inkling of crazy, mixed up comfort when I remember his death back in 1984.  I was still working at the Naked i in the Combat Zone, which is exactly where I met Andy for the first time years earlier.  I think I should save our stories for the book… Except for this part of the story -

The fact is… Andy was the first person I lost to death.  He died on May 16, 1984, 22 years before Torri, on the exact same day.

WBCN Reunion

It is a long look back to the days when I worked at WBCN.   Click on the photo and you will be taken…

Those days were young and brazen, colorful and dynamic.  I was unaware of feeling judged and lived present tense.  I was falling in love with a motorcycle cop named Donny Wightman and thought I knew a lot about a lot, even though I didn’t.

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Book

When I was 24, I had a fabulous agent named Ike Williams (John Taylor Williams, formally).  I actually wrote a book.  The working title was Bare.  I am trying to find the old manuscript and book proposal.  He brought it to Houghton Mifflin and then Lyle Stuart, both of which were interested enough to have the project at the editorial board.  HM determined it to be too much like Edie by Jean Stein and George Plimpton.  At the time I had no idea who Edie was.

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Yew Update

So the yews are gone, their needles and cavernous root balls waiting to rot in the woods.  Did you know they are poisonous?  And the cancer drug taxon is made from yews? YEW have to be kidding!!  Anyway, there are more yew warriors out there than you think.  Tony on the front end loader made all the difference.  He was working down the street.

Birdie at Dusk and 55 Practice Swings

Last year some concerned and intuitive individuals enrolled me in a golf membership

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Killing the Yews

Today I will yank someone’s disgusting old yews out of their dirt. 

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My 1215 Day Rant

Because of natural causes, I am coming to the end of three years of hustle. I feel less sorry for myself, resigned to the next change.  Living out of a car, a tent, having no phone, no Internet, no TV, no mailbox?  I wouldn’t be the first or the last.   I understand that being content could be fabulous revenge for the pieces of insect crap that lied in a court of law, and the even larger scat that started their little witch-hunt, and the amoeba-sized drippings who just had to jump on the excitement (like the Jeffrey Seglins). 

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9/11

There are not many ways you can’t remember the day, the moment, like JFK but worse.  I was working.  Meeting with some morning regulars (you know who you are).  When one woman in particular didn’t show up I found that worrisome.  Winkle barked incessantly for the two prior sessions.  I did what I always did and wish I could do now – I called Donny.

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Apathy and My New Resume

How would you re-write your resume without censoring yourself?

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My Resume

This morning I applied erasers and Plumbers Goop to a leak in the hot tub.  Yesterday I stuffed the valve opening with styrofoam and Goop.  Most importanty I began work on updating my resume.  I am already looking forward to Friday when I clean my house.  I considered washing bird shit off the cars but that feels self-defeating so instead I will take the nine hole walk with my cousin Leslie.  I am thinking of starting off with my Sponge Bob ball.

Joey Kramer book and cell phones

I read Joey Kramer’s book and he dedicated it to Torri, among others like his father Mickey. I met Mickey. He was quiet and sat down a lot. He was nice. I am proud of Joey for doing this

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Bad Therapy

Bad Therapy: Writing Goodbye Letters

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Postal Wisdom

on the most recent teenage loss in the town of Hull…

“I hope they get the help they need because you can’t go through it alone.”

Ain’t that the truth?  And the summary of it all.

Bullseye Mabob Takeover

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Hull's Secret Garden Tour

I have to stay put in my garden for 6 hours.

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After Behind Screen Work

I am feeling “good enough” about this site to go more public so here it is… my photography site, still in its earliest stages.

Why Keep This?

Updated on 06.1.2009 by Lucy Wightman

I of course spent the months after Torri turned stone cold putting what I could on her website. It was a way to mother her, to trick myself that she was really still here. I have vented. I have shared tidbits and more, and then less.

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