Posted by blamethebanjo on Monday, September 5, 2011
I sit here at the wheel of my little window to the world reaching out to my internet banjo friends again. . I have been pondering how unusual it would have seemed if twenty five years ago I would have been told about this medium and it's effects on my life.
Thanks to e-Bay I can truthfully say I am a world known artist! But as this would have been a statement of huge proportions way back then, today with this seemingly equal playing field streaming through lines of electrical feelers it means little to nothing. Anyone with internet access could easily accomplish what seems to have lost much of it's luster because of it's commonality.
Yesterday I attended my son's get together of which the whole Carlisle clan were present excepting my recently estranged youngest daughter and my two young grandsons who are the owners of a major section of this old heart.
There was plenty of comfort food that made me uncomfortable due to my weakness for anything with sugar sprinkled on it. Anything you can load up with onions, catsup, mustard and Miracle Whip I attacked with a vengeance. I behaved like the wise old patriarch holding and talking gibberish to my newest grandson who looks like the little papoose he is.
As usual these situations soon lead my mind somewhere else where reality meshes with some dream world where I serenade someone who hasn't been seen in decades. I live in this forest of memories more and more these days. Sometimes I drift along as if I have already turned to dust as I see myself riding high on a warm wind heading to that place where I can lie in the arms of the sweetly departed I so miss.
I wonder sometimes if the memory of me will fall flat within the thoughts of those left behind when I ride that wind someday. In a far away, future I hope I am able to bring a smile to the ones who might remember me. I pray I don't bring a frown. I have been foolish to a fault thinking I entertain. I blame that on my inflated ego which is only surpassed by my self loathing. And my dear mother's encouragement of my imitations of Red Skelton all those years ago. We laughed so easily without guilt or the knowledge of the world just outside the door. I was shaped in those days.
What once seemed funny turns tragic when laced with bitterness and sorrow. When the laughter fails to light up the eyes of those who have seen behind the smiles of the clown. Nothing is gleeful. Nobody knows when the conversation might turn sour and this stifles any chance of merriment of any length.
But I am still flittering above like the down of a dandelion being taken to a secret destination that promises to be a better place and time and it is so easy to be carried away.
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