Thank God He's a Country Boy

I have a lot of knitty things to blog about, but I thought I'd take a little moment to talk about John Denver.

John Denver lives in the little house next door to my best friend Loni. He got his name, John Denver, from the fact that he usually wears a pair of big seventies glasses that make him look like this picture in the sleeve of my John Denver cd of the real John Denver in some similarly nerdy glasses. We have no idea what his real name is, but since he actually answers to "John Denver" we've decided its best not to ask him . We like to let him retain his aura of mystery.

John Denver is nuts.

There are many stories I could tell about John Denver, and I will tell them sometime.

For now, I'll let John Denver speak for himself.

It's hard to actually put anything he says into context, because there really is no context for anything that he says. We sit out on the porch, and we'll ask him a question to get him rolling, and then he just goes off into John Denver land and we get to listen to him do it.

Here are a few John Denver quotes.

He pointed to this tree out in Loni's backyard and told me a story about it. He said:

"Tammy told me, this was back in 1987..." (Keep in mind, John Denver has only lived here for about a year.) "She told me....See that tree? That tree is YOU! And when they come to cut that tree down, they gonna cut YOU down!" And then he takes a drag of his cigarette and looks back at me, and says, "That's why I was all freaked out when Loni was gonna cut that tree down. Cause I was on acid."

Then suddenly, John Denver has a British accent, and he sounds exactly like Robin Leach.

"In New York City, girls have sex, right there in front of you."

He waves his hand in front of him to simulate the curves of a woman's body. "Just like a perfect rain drop.....I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just as giddy as a snake."

Then he moves on to talking about alcohol. "Coke and Crown," he says. "It puts a little umbrella on top of your head....Kind of like you have staff...or a concussion."

And John Denver on VD: "You know...you can actually see one's soul...if you have Hepatitis C."

We talked a little about religion. John Denver asked me if I was Lutheran and I told him I was a witch.

"You're a witch? Welcome aboard, dear. If you're sure you're a witch, welcome aboard. My first wife was Church of Christ, you know."

Loni asked him, "John Denver, how many times have you been married?"

"Never! Why get married when the cows are free?"

The thing is, John Denver is nuts, yes, but even though he seems to be talking in circles about nothing at all, I understand what he's saying, and a lot of times I agree with him. Which might tell you something about me. I get him. And I think he gets me. We have a rare kind of friendship. He doesnt care what I think of him, because he's nuts, and I don't care what he thinks of me, because he's nuts. And so we say things to each other that most people don't say. There's no politeness with John Denver, and therefor there's no rudeness either. When I think he's full of shit I tell him he's full of shit. When he thinks I'm a slut he tells me I'm a slut. And when he starts to get on my nerves and I'm over it, I tell him I'm over it, and that he should go home, and he goes home, and I still like him, and he still likes me.

Maybe John Denver and I have a strange kind of unconditional love. I really do think of him rather fondly. He lives a simple life. He gets his check every month and he eats his fresh fruits and vegatables, and he walks around Poteau, and listens to his music late at night, and rolls his own cigarettes. I think he's happy, and I'm happy for him. I think he's probably had some hard times in his life, and I hope they are over for him. I think maybe he's just satisfied with his life. He doesnt seem like he wants anything more than what he has.

I aspire to be more like John Denver.

If nothing else, you gotta admit, he has some awesome hair.

Not Down By The River

Yup, yup.

Untouchable Face

I don't know about that hair, and those are the worst pants I've ever seen, but its a great performance.

View Askew

Why are all the good ones taken?

A little green...

This is what I found outside earlier. Still wintery, but the sun was out and there were a few little sprouts of green to be found. A few buds on the trees, a few patches of grass, a couple of bushes still green, and guess what that second one is...

A big clump of wild onions. I pulled up a handful and ate them raw. I can still smell that sharp garlickyness on my hands. Seek, and ye shall find, I guess.

Primavera

In quitting my job, I've ensured that I will accomplish at least one New Year's resolution, Must Knit More From Stash. Add to that the need for a birthday present for a mother who loves knitted dishcloths, and you get me furiously knitting on a Mason-Dixon Ballband Dishcloth jag. This one I made with some blue Cottontots and white from a giant cone of Peaches and Cream that I'm certain I'll never ever use up in a million years. Don't you wish you were a tiny fairy-sized person and could curl up under it like a buttery soft blanket? I obviously do.

There is much to love about this pattern, not least of which is the fact that it is interesting enough to keep me actually wanting to knit it, but simple enough that it just ticks along and basically knits itself. Of course, I love the idea of making something humble and useful from bits and balls of leftover plain cotton. There's something grounding about making something so ordinary, yet so special, because no one but a knitter would ever consider putting a couple of hours into actually making one's own washcloth.

My only problem is that the yarn-thriftiness turns into yarn-lust when I see that I have the white cotton, and a lovely greyish bluegreen, which would look fabulous with a bright red, which I don't have. And my brain says, Must remember to pick up a ball of red....but then I begin to violate the no-yarn-buying rule, and before you know it I'll have bought 18 different colors of kitchen cotton with the excuse that it will help to use up the one cone of plain white.

Which is why the Ballband dishcloths should probably be put on hold for the 3 sweaters, two hats, 2 scarves, and eighty thousand socks that are already on the needles. Nevermind the mountain of FO's that only need sewing up or ends woven in.

I think the problem is that everything on the needles right now are wintery, wooly things, and my spring fever is beginning to set in. The Burpee seed catalog came today and so I've been dreaming of summery veggies. Purple carrots and peppery basil and juicy red tomatoes as big as your fist and fried squash and big green and silvery Charleston Grey watermelons. And lettuce so mild and buttery (everything's buttery today, isnt it?) you just eat it by itself, fistfuls of it with no dressing, with a little taste of dirt still on the leaves. And wild onions. And blackberries. And polk salad. And sucking honeysuckle nectar out of the little white and creamy-orange blossoms.

And of course, cotton washcloths.

I have this urge to run, to go wild, to get the hell out of Dodge. I'm craving Eureka Springs, that perfect little stone haven of light and darkness, of love and light and haunted hotels and Rainbow people playing guitars in the street. I want to be dancing in Chelsea's bar to a hippie jam band, no bra, my blue mermaid skirt swishing, tossing my hair in some beautiful hippie boy's bearded face. I want to be picking mint in the ditch for mojitos. I want to be smoking a joint under a canopy of oaks behind Spring Street with people who have names like Raven and Fish and Porkchop. I want to rename myself after some kind of animal, and grow my hair, and eat calamari and fettucini primavera (everything primavera!) at Cafe Soleil. I guess what I really want is for things to be the way they were this summer, when things were crazy on the surface but somehow okay as long as we had a bottle of cheap wine, and a good song on the radio, and we could yell out into the warm nights. Seriously!

I think I'm just feeling too quite. The proverbial calm after the storm. To tell the truth, I'd love nothing more than to be on the front porch, watching the lightening in the green sky, that eery feeling in my gut. I like big dangerous things that make me feel small.

That's all. For now anyway.

Unresolution.

So, I had all these New Year's resolutions, right....and told myself, like I tell myself every year, that this would be the year I would get it together and do all the things I want to do, become all the things I want to become. One of these resolutions was to post something to this blog on a regular, preferably daily basis. Well, as you can tell, we are five days into the New Year and this is the first post.

I had put all this pressure on myself to perform, to do all the things in my life that are undone, to finally make myself conform to this ideal image of myself in my mind, and I was forced to realize today that I'm just never going to live up to it. I'm never going to be this organized, charming, healthy, happy person all the time. Maybe I won't even be that way most of the time. And I had to face the fact today that I'm just going to have to work, not on being this perfect person, but on being okay with NEVER being this perfect person.

I quit my job today, for reasons that I probably shouldn't discuss publicly. But suffice it to say, I've put way too much pressure on myself to perform when I'm running on empty, and I'm no good to anyone, especially at the shelter, when I do that to myself. I've been trying so hard and getting nowhere, because I haven't given myself enough credit for everything I've already done, and everything I've been through in the past year. 2007 was possibly the hardest year of my life, and I haven't even stopped long enough to admit that to myself.

So my new New Year's resolution is this: no more resolutions. I'm going to do what I can, when I can, and do what I want, when I want. I'm going to stop putting all this pressure on myself to be everything to everyone, including myself. I'm not even going to commit to keeping this resolution. I resolve to be unresolved. I resolve to maybe, possibly, if I feel like it, knit, drink tea, take naps, read, write, and hang out with the people I love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eOu-jVuuxo This video pretty much sums it up...