The edges were crispy, no . . . hard.
Cookies can be like that, and sometimes deservedly so. Like a Ginger Snap; a Ginger Snap has to be hard. A Ginger Snap just has to be hard, or there is no snap.
          But this was Chocolate Chip, a big cookie, an expensive cookie, and a hard cookie. And I didn’t really need a cookie, but it called out to me. It was a good-looking cookie, one of a few stacked up like pancakes behind the display case glass.
          Standing in line at Starbucks, waiting, I decided I needed a cookie. I hadn’t had breakfast, woke late, and I had to be at the office for a conference call at 8:30, and in that rush hour traffic, I decided I really needed coffee. Really.
          So there I was, at 8:12, six minutes from the office, almost ready to order coffee,
          when I decided the cookie would be some sort of breakfast,
          something to stop the stomach from rumbling,
          as I knew it would be rumbling (it always did)
          when I only had coffee for breakfast.
I was sure I could afford the cookie. I’d left my wallet on the kitchen counter, but managed to scrounge a little over five, or just about six, bucks in silver from my pockets and the car’s ash tray (hopefully there’d be a few quarters left for the parking meter).
          I really needed coffee, and I really need that cookie.
          I didn’t discover the hardness of the cookie immediately, not until partway through the conference call. My stomach rumbled. I wasn’t saying much, I was really only listening to the call, so I reached into the small, crisp Starbucks bag to break off a corner of the cookie, just a quick bite.
          It didn’t break.
          The cookie certainly didn’t even bend, not even with the pressure I felt would be required to break the corner off a big Chocolate Chip cookie. It was hard, and hard didn’t necessarily mean brittle. There was no snap.
          So I put off my cookie break until after the call, and then I tried again.
          It took two hands to break the cookie.
          Two hands!
          One cookie.
It was a hard cookie, a deceiving cookie. It didn’t look, at all, like it would be hard, not
when it was displayed in the case. Then, it looked good. It looked soft and sweet and
delicious, as a cookie should be; especially an expensive cookie.
          Its edges were stiff, almost calcified. It more than crunched as I bit into it. Its looks were not all that was deceiving; its taste (and I use that word loosely) was disguised by the crunch, what taste there was. I did not taste like Chocolate. It tasted more of freezer, and crunch, and, and burnt (I knew all about burnt cookies). I didn’t see that, and I didn’t anticipate that. There was the taste of burnt, like it was baked on a cookie sheet that had previously burned a batch of cookies.
          And it had looked so good.
          If this was buyer beware, hell, I didn’t feel I’d been warned. And if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, well, it didn’t.
          It lied to me.
          The cookie was a lie. Not just metaphorically.
          Lies always leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Still I ate it. I wondered why. The militant consumer in me wanted to slip it back into the branded envelope and return to Starbucks. Yes, I could use another cup of coffee, but more so, I wanted another cookie: a replacement cookie. Money was dear, but this wasn’t even about the money, it was more about the principle.
          If you are going to charge $2.00 for a cookie, it should taste like a $2.00 cookie.
          It looked like a $2.00 cookie, as far as cookies go.
          It looked like an expensive cookie, a good cookie.
It wasn’t, not at all.
          In hindsight had I the time and had it not been a spontaneous purchase I would have stepped next door. Subway had a deal, a dozen cookies for $5. A good deal, if you wanted a dozen cookies.
          But I didn’t want, nor did I need, a dozen cookies. I only wanted one cookie (and really, I didn’t need that, not as far as the calorie count goes).
          Even then, if I wanted a dozen cookies, and had planned on purchasing a dozen cookies, and had made time for said purchase, I would have driven a few blocks over to that bakery.
          Now those were cookies.
          I used to go there a lot, or frequently. That place had great cookies, and not just chocolate chip.
          Who had the time?
          I didn’t have the time, not this morning, to make the trip to that bakery, and I certainly didn’t have the time to drive back to Starbucks.
          I couldn’t even make time (could you ever?), and now and not because of the back-to-back appointments scheduled throughout the morning and the intermittent interruption of the calls that would surely come I was in a shitty mood.
          All because of a cookie,
          all because that cookie did not appear to be what it was.
          I should have known. Things are rarely as they appear.
          I should have known that.

 

I could say I’ve been sorry, or least of all try.
I could think of more reasons, I can’t think of more whys.
City streets nearly barren, the clock nearly two,
there’s nothing worth doing, or there’s nothing to do.
So come see the night, how I think it should be.
Open your eyes. Admission is free.

Let’s walk under the moonlight like it’s not even there.
Remembering moments, remembering where.
We could question our virtues, or shout out at fate,
laugh at the boundaries we haphazardly create.
Still, there’s no point showing the scars we once knew,
this is the night to think it all through.

In daylight I’m restless, it’s become a disease.
Yet I won’t beg for mercy, I can’t even say please.
I won’t become another victim, who walks in their sleep,
I won’t pick or choose battles as I look for relief.
All that’s familiar is the uncertain dance,
deciding on whether it’s choice, or it’s chance.

We can go on pretending we are getting on with life,
with its make-believe anger and fictional strife.
Still we know how we are, and we know what is ours.
Let’s get back to believing, and get lost in the stars.
Little comes from resistance. Little comes over time,
little comes from knowing what is no longer mine.

Time passes like traffic, oftentimes too slow,
keeps changing directions, unsure where it goes.
It takes longer to get there than you once realized,
as you hold back the wonder, or hold in the surprise.
Months turn to years, and you get stuck in a lane,
mistakes keep returning again, and again.

Storm clouds are rolling, gathering up the rain,
to rinse off the silence and wash out the pain.
Let’s walk through the night like it’s not even there,
and make up a version of our own truth or dare.
Forget the umbrella, we’ll get soaked to the skin.
If we don’t have the answers, will we find them within?

We can pick off the problems, like lint on a sleeve,
take a pulse of our feelings, and control of our needs.
We could walk like it’s nothing. We could walk like we’re real.
We could walk like you walk, walking away from a deal.
Still the money’s on the table, I’ve got nowhere to go
and nowhere I want to, nowhere but home.

© 2015 j.g. lewis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t talk to me at dawn. Caught up in whispers
of residual dreams beyond my control,
I’m not always ready for a new day, and
frequently have difficulty comprehending
where the night falls.

Morning is not the time for words
if the night has come before. Every breath
a struggle. I wake. No heartbeat. No. No talk.
Blinded by sight and sound I won’t hear
the meaning, or the message.

Give voice to my days instead, where I won’t
see your reflection, but will feel the wonder above
the cacophony and confusion
that terrorizes an otherwise
monotonous day.

Evening’s long shadow laps up scraps
of humanity. I pay less and less attention as
the planets close in. Considering your many renditions,
I await your arrival. Any night. What shade
will you be this night?

Then is the time, when distance fades, where we tell
each other stories. Little else matters, and we ask
the impossible. Inevitably darkness
consumes me, until you become
less significant.

Through nights, when I’m restless, when dawn
is simply a concept, don’t waste your words on me.
I will not hear them, promises or otherwise,
or find the light, or time, to
see your lips move.

Dawn reveals serious wounds, time misspent
and misplaced words. Where morning hints
of the night before and I may not hear your call,
don’t talk to me at dawn,
or talk to me at all.

© 2015 j.g. lewis

Fewer tears have been shed for greater reasons, but today, with still-reddened eyes and puffy cheeks, she is having trouble making it through the day.

Heavy rain outside the window, hunkered down in her call-centre workstation, she’s trying to keep a consistent tone in her voice. She did not sleep last night; she couldn’t. Memories will do that.

The late-night news announced the Grateful Dead’s final performances over two weekends. She wept, openly. There was nobody around to hear her pain, but it was authentic. The tears had a purpose; the most significant factor in her life was coming to an end. At some point she rose from her bed, put on one of the many bootleg cassettes from her collection, lit incense, sparked a joint and began going through her past.

Barely 16, she ran away from her rural Saskatchewan home and the cruelty of her father, a pastor, and the indentured servant he called his wife. Her Christian name was Charity, but she never knew generosity or benevolence. She could no longer obey the rules, early curfews, and watchful eyes of a judgmental town. Under the prairie moon, with the few hundred dollars she had managed to liberate from the collection plate, she followed a belief that life was better somewhere else.

The song said to go to San Francisco, and she hitchhiked across an unfamiliar nation to get there. It was the summer of love, and she had to see the generation with a new explanation. There she found real people, a family offering the acceptance she had never known. They were gentle people, as the song said, in a community where older women offered survival tips, and the older men gave you a place to sleep.

By age alone, Charity was a true flower child, spirited and naïve enough to follow any path offered to her.

She found work washing dishes, or took jobs handing out brochures to tourists. She discovered marijuana, and the music not allowed into her home. She was always dancing, a sin in the eyes of her parents and in the religion that guided them. Dancing was like prayer to her new religion, and the music was its scripture.

Last night, she listened to her music in the darkness, alternating between jubilant smiles and more tears. About 5 a.m. she went online and bought a ticket to the band’s final Soldier Field performance with the little credit remaining on her MasterCard. She’d have to negotiate time off work, but she had to be at the concert.

She has no idea how she’ll get there, but Charity Lowe will be in Chicago this Saturday, watching the Grateful Dead. She will bid farewell to the band and, more so, say goodbye to her past.

After returning from Woodstock, she fell into favour with the band. The softer, more countrified sounds appealed more to her laid-back nature than the psychedelic rock and roll that was taking over the airwaves. The Dead had an organic sound that fueled her soul. She danced at all their concerts, and was noticed. She was young and pretty; her wavy, waist-length, siren-red hair called attention to her.

The band and its followers shared common ideals, drugs, and the communal values that took her through the years. She became part of the revolution, protesting against racism, hatred, and the Vietnam War. She learned how to tie-dye, and to make jewelry and soap, and supported herself by selling her wares at concerts across the country. She embodied all the counter-culture was. That was her — wearing bell-bottoms, a smile, and little else — on the cover of the magazine under the headline THESE ARE THE HIPPIES. But she was more than that; she was a Deadhead, long before they even had a name.

It was all about peace and love; free love, she gave and took. Turned on and tuned in, she travelled with the band as part of the family. The Skull and Roses album cover artwork was tattooed across her back. Charity was committed.

When the tours ended, or money ran out, she’d temporarily settle where she landed, in the mid-west or further. She worked as a waitress or store clerk, anything to raise a enough money to find her way back home to Haight Ashbury.

She travelled further during the years The Dead stopped touring. There were winters in Thailand, one in Berlin, and summers working as a chambermaid or office receptionist. She did anything she could to make a buck, to exist and to survive.

She resumed touring with the band, when the band resumed touring, right through the 80s when Deadheads were more frat boys and brokers. She endured the laughter and wisecracks when she was called an old hippie. That was all a true hippie could be, she knew, and she wore the label as proudly as a peace symbol. She’d smile and sell over-priced tie-dyed T-shirts to the posers.

It was a long strange trip, and Charity took it longer than most. Over time, as the drugs became heavier, the life grew harder and the choices more difficult. She was passed over and passed on. Once at the vanguard of the sexual revolution, the love and sex she then took came with a price. It got hazy, some of the years a complete blur, and she hooked up with a second-rate drummer in a third-rate blues band. He seduced her with his poetry, and shared her with his friends. Her arms still speak of the time. The track marks have all but faded, but are still a reminder.

Somehow she ended up in a shitty Winnipeg hotel room. The drummer left her with half her luggage and no money. It was a wake-up call. She worked off the hotel bill as a beer maid, and ended up staying. She found a 12-step-program and attended meetings faithfully. Charity did not shrug off the messages the Bible provided, but she would never call herself a believer. She believed only in herself.

Eventually she settled into her own apartment, working a string of dead-end jobs and making the soaps and jewelry that had provided an income in the past. She still makes the stuff, setting up tables at Christmas craft sales and vendor markets on her days off. Her table at the Folk Festival is always popular, and in a few weeks she will again be flush with cash.

She’s been working the call-centre circuit for more than a decade, now with a bank with some benefits. This close to retirement, she has to think of the future. She is older and she knows it. Her thick hair now as grey as a storm cloud, the roses of her tattoo have faded, and the skeleton’s smile sags with her skin.

Like the skeleton, she also smiles less. When she is sad, when life seems to put up obstacles, all she has to do is think back to the early days of peace and love.

She can ill afford time away from work, and right now she can hardly find the cash for the trip, but will get there. She may even hitchhike. This week she’ll have to find extra time to make a couple of batches of soap, inventory for next month’s Folk Fest. The last run of her Lilac soap — distilling fresh flowers for a true scent — was completed Thursday and she was planning a few more batches with patchouli and nutmeg this week. Patch was always a big seller at the folk fest. So are her T-shirts. She’d just about run her credit card to the max buying supplies.

She has to make it to Chicago. It’s not an opportune time for her, and, like a funeral, on short notice. She will be there.

She’s only seen the band play once since this city became home. Travelling back to California after Jerry’s death, she had to see how they had changed. It was still The Dead (one member does not a band make) and she had the chance to touch base with her kind. She even ran into Phil, and he remembered her . . . or he said he did. What was important is that she remembered.

It’s not about where you are, or how you are living. It’s about surviving. Sure, you make mistakes. You’ll continue to make them, and they become a part of you. The most important thing is to know who you are, remember how you were, and allow in the memories that are good.

Charity has never returned to her birthplace, and never again spoke with her parents, now long gone. There are some amends too drastic to be realized, and they are the past she does not wish to remember.

Time with the band will soon be nothing but a memory. Her last vestige of the hippie movement, the concert is symbolic of a part of her life coming to an end. Once a lost soul, she took the message the hippie movement offered and lived it wholly. Make love, not war; it’s still a better option, despite how fucked up that love can get.

Next Saturday is her final chance to say goodbye to The Dead, and for that she is grateful.

©2015 j.g. lewis

“For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair
Intro.: All across the nation, such a strange vibration
People in motion
There’s a whole generation with a new explanation
People in motion, people in motion”
                                                                – John Phillips

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
                                                                                                                                                         – Marcel Proust

It’s different for each of us; the power, the magic, the light or spirit that guides us through what we love to do. All of us have a muse, tangible or intangible, we come to rely on to keep the creative juices flowing.

In fact, we may have several muses we count on (depending on the project or circumstance), but sometimes they are not easily accessible, or can’t be summoned exactly when we want.

We are demanding of our muses, expecting them to provide the inspiration to make it through another page or poem. We expect them to be there; we expect them to be as easily turned on as our laptop. It’s when they do not meet your expectations that you begin to expect more of yourself. You push yourself harder, stepping past the point of creativity.
You start forcing the work, and most often the results appear exactly as they are. Forced.

This is when frustration sets in and, often, when we begin to run dry. When the inspiration for your work goes missing or is ignored, productivity decreases and the results are less than enthusiastic. The term ‘writer’s block’ (a convenient excuse, more than a syndrome) is often used, but it is far more than that.

When your work becomes routine, you have probably been working too hard or have become too focused. It gets to the point where you begin to ignore life as it surrounds you. In doing so, you fail to notice your muses.

Like the sister goddess they are (the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, as Greek mythology goes), a muse is to be treated kindly, and not as slaves or implements. A muse must be respected and treated as the gifts they are. They cannot be overworked, and they, along with your self, need time to rejuvenate.

When you are at odds with your inspiration, it is time to infuse your muse.

There are easy ways to restore the creative process, sometimes it’s as simple as giving yourself permission to step away from the page or palette for a while. This is a good time to read, to take a walk or short trip, listen to live music, or go out for coffee with a friend. Feed your muse and it will continue to provide the mental nutrition you need.

Then there are times when the simple becomes complicated, when you don’t feel like talking and dumping your problems on a friend, or when reading the book everybody is raving about becomes more about analyzing another page of words.

This is when you need a wholesale change in how you have been functioning. As Carpal Tunnel syndrome may settle in when certain muscles are over-used, your creativity may become cramped in its current isolation. This is a perfect time to find a project or passion that uses another part of your brain or body, a time when you need to stretch other muscles.

For a musician, it might be taking up yoga. The graphic designer who spends too much time hunched over a Mac may take to the garden (I think the ‘high tech, high touch’ philosophy was introduced in the early ‘80s). A painter may take up sculpture as a means of providing an alternative artistic vision. A writer may take up painting, or a musical instrument. Sometimes
it is doing quite the opposite of what you have been doing.

I have been stuck in the edit mode over the past months, rechecking, reformatting, and (in some cases) rewriting past works, all with a certain goal in mind. Editing, while necessary, does not have the same creative spark as writing fresh material. It can be laborious, soul sucking, occasionally painful (you are, after all, killing your babies) and immeasurably frustrating. The more you edit, the more frustrating it becomes.

I often use poetry to counter to process, to give myself time to let words fall onto the page. It can, and does, work, but it still finds you in the same place; sitting in front of a keyboard trying to formularize feelings for the greater world.

It does not allow a fresh perspective.

Over the past months, I’ve stepped back behind a camera as a means of getting beyond the now-familiar fictional worlds I have created. Photography is also very familiar to me, having spent my first career as a photojournalist, but it is not an art form in which I have become immersed for many years. Even then, my former camera work was more focused (no pun intended) on what was newsworthy and what needed to be recorded. It was a career of learning how to fit art and intuition into a deadline.

These days my photography is more specific to composition and controlling, capturing or defying the availability of light. It’s a challenge, as much as it is enjoyable. It’s forcing me to look at life differently, to find a new perspective. It is about stepping beyond boundaries and comfort zone. As you look deeper, you begin using a separate and distinct side of your psyche.

Although I am still mainly in edit mode, these regular breaks from my current reality are allowing a new vibrancy into my poetry, and have fostered a greater overall sense of well-being. It comes from not doing something that is usual. While it may not be unusual, it is something different.

The adage ‘a change is as good as a rest’ rings true. Your creativity is refreshed by not using your talents in the same manner you have been. As you return to the work that brought you down in the first place, you can approach it in a different context. You may discover elements of your regular craft that you had not noticed before, simply because you are now looking at them in a different way.

Sometimes it is not what we look at, but how we look at it.