IF WHEN AND MAYBE

67. IF WHEN AND MAYBE:

‘Went down to the wire went down to the south just to be able to say something different and motion to a new arrival and as it turned out ‘Andy Griffith’ really did suck was probably the worst you could ever see but everyone saw it anyway and that was just the way it was and just today I was looking at a photo once more of the balcony shot where Martin Luther King’s death scene was photographed and the rooming house across the way people pointing and all that and I noticed the big ’57 DeSoto there in the parking lot and it took me back a bit because probably only in the south was that car still an issue in those days April 4 1968 or whatever it was when he was killed and around here that model was long gone and forgotten and it reminded me too of being in like third or fourth grade as I recall it well and maybe School 5 about 1959 or so when DeSoto was put out of its misery it was ended as a nameplate and production stopped much like Packard at about the same time and this sort of thing sticks to the mind Dodge Edsel Chevy Ford Buick Oldsmobile and all the rest and it’s just that simple and easy how things change all about us and die off or are removed without any logic or mention on our part and some other guy I heard was saying ‘I’m not really sure if this is war or just the beginning’ and I wasn’t able to determine what it was he meant by that but to me it didn’t really matter ENERGY and all being what it is and the body goes on even in pain and all its thudding bereavment as we move along and the bed-ridden ones eventually grow silent for there’s a time when everyone sort of knows there’s not much more to say and having said that I go about hoping it’s not that time for me and people in the next room are watching pictures ‘the dustbowl they’re in’ as the lady said but rows and rows of people caught on camera show their anguish and hatred and probably their need and desire too and their hunger for real fool and for ideas too and what’s it all about (if only anyone would say) except for enlightenment but ‘puffery ain’t enlightenment’ and that’s for sure and even that DeSoto when you think about it wasn’t really that old and even today people drive around in 11 or 12 year old cars no problem but it seems for that time and place the fashion was so different and startlingly so that it really stood out and yet today it really bears no importance for dead is dead and the ‘King is Dead’ shall we say and even now already there are people scurrying around searching for ‘criminals’ and people guilty of ‘war crimes’ as they put it as if the whole thing wasn’t already a blot on our conscience a crime but against what I can’t specify for life is jagged and life too ends just as quickly as a tear rolls down the face and sometimes turning around to look back is like trying to peer through a hole in one’s heart - difficult to achieve but a truly worthwhile endeavor - and without missing a beat the movie posters are up everywhere and all I see advertised are the death and destruction of magical cinema WAR and if movies revel in death and destruction and entire entertainment operations rotate around it than how is it not right and normal that the fire and flux of war becomes acclimated into the hearts and souls and minds of people who then actualize the reality of the man-caused death and destruction they bring upon each other and in addition to that one sits back – as I do – and recalls the past and remembers many things and realizes like myself that ‘I have no hurts’ and that no one has ever left me or betrayed me or injured me or left me in a bad way and so probably pretty fortunate I do go on and live the life I live and before that nothing else matters and all else pales and fades away to nothing and everything non-descript and purposeless is just as well gone but echoes sound like memory and there really is a secret behind oh so many things but it’s so hard not to get normal and gloss it all over but the secret language and the un-noted maneuvers of things are the little marks that matter and alter the world and yeah maybe so the trucks still run and the river flows and the jaded attributes of time and place seem to change and some people there are EVEN who never stay in one place but I find myself the opposite I NEVER MOVE and probably never will because for me it’s all one and it’s important too to remain and stay settled and the appropriate reaction to anything is more reaction or perhaps more candor but I often find the best is not caring either way and just letting the silence and the reverie take their own course like some old wood on a building or a regretted jumble of words thrown out and never retracted IF WHEN AND MAYBE they should have been but memories are jars on the face of a wall and when no one is looking someone steals something away and takes one down (but I’m a forceful man and come to tame the unruly and
re-number the dead) and before you know it all of everything is gone but just like that whatever comes to be faces its own extinction in just as much an instant as not…."