So Where Ya Headed? Chris: So, where ya headed? Austin? Of course… Dunno why I asked. I mean you're standing on the side of the road with your thumb in the air holding a sign that clearly reads ‘Austin’ and still, I have to ask. Sometimes I wish we all walked through this life holding a sign that announces where we are headed. I guess now that I think about it, we do kinda carry one that announces where we've been – ya just gotta know how to read it. But that’s a different story, Siri: Continue on Texas Farm Road 3721 for 437 miles. Chris: Yea, it’s a GPS. Whoda thunk that ten years ago? A global positioning satellite pointed at my car, and I’d like it. It’s like a sign that announces where I am. So, now that we know where we are, and where we're headed, I guess the only remaining question is: Where ya coming from? Oh yea? I like it out there. That’s where they filmed The Road Runner cartoons. Huh? The Music? Oh, its satellite radio. I like it out here in the middle of nowhere. Though, I think its funny that they call it Sirius. Named after the The Dog Star – Sirius. You know. The brightest star in the sky. At least it used to be. Now the brightest star in the sky is (I am not making this up) the Nortel Satellite. The very thing that the "Sirius" Satellite is named from has been given second class status by… well, The Sirius Satellite itself. One of nature's greatest feats has been replaced by something manmade... like Barry Bonds beating Hank Aaron's home-run record. Oh sure they named the company "Sirius" to “honor” its casualty. To me, it kinda feels like naming your sports team "The Washington Redskins," or your subdivision “Nez-Perce Estates,” Or your town “Taos,” or your state “Dakota” or your method of traveling across the high plains in search of buffalo wings a “Winnebago.” The only thing I know for sure is there aren't too many Delaware Indians living on Manhattan Island who can get the Shawmut Bank to give them a loan for a Cherokee. Next to the Sun and the Moon, nothing in the sky has been written about more than that star. The Egyptians based their calendar on when it. They used it to predict if it would be a hot dry summer or cold winter or if the Nile would reward her with her fertile flooding. Me, I use it for the weather channel. I like this channel here. The show's called "Disorder." They play the best of everything regardless of what genre it is – as long as it's good. Like you might hear Rachmaninoff played next to The Cramps, like yer supposed to. Cuz if its good – it lasts. Like… like evolution. Like... say you’re a bug, or a bird or a jelly fish, or an ape and you are good at being an ape or a jelly fish – odds are you're still here. There is no "order" to it. You can't look at the stars and see a pattern like when you can stare at the wallpaper in a Cracker Barrel. I mean, the stars are indeed wallpaper – but they are God's wallpaper, and God does not shop at Home Depot. Although he does occasionally hire Mexicans out of the Home Depot parking lot just to piss off Republicans. Well, yea - you're right about part of that… Texas is big... but I don't think its ugly, In fact - I think it's beautiful. It has so far surpassed the zenith of ugliness – that it is flawless. It is perfect – even if it is perfectly ugly – and you can't argue that perfection in and of it self is not beautiful. It's just kind of an acquired taste – like gin and tonic or the poetry of Rilke or the later films of Mel Brooks. But I always say, “You can't comment on the scenery unless take the trip.” It’s like if you take a picture of any one place out in the middle of nowhere – its ugly. Tumble weeds and dust. Cacti and cattle. But when you drive across it... something cathartic starts to happen... It's hypnotizing... You see shit that’s not really there... Or maybe, it was there all the time and you have to drive for 14 hours straight to find it? When you drive from El Paso to Orange you see the barren bluffs that go on forever, but then the moon rises, and some bug hits your windshield – just below the belt of Orion And you look to Orion and you see the vastness of this landscape – The highway – our lives – as both vast and tiny. It’s like “Horton Hears a Who!” – only in reverse – and the elephant is running around the galaxy trying to get everyone in the universe to shout at once, "We are here! We are here!" So that we -- here on earth -- will know that heaven is out there. The road does go on for ever. Just like the stars, and our lives, and the poetry of Rilke and the music of Townes Van Zandt.

God Fearing Agnostic At the airport, they asked, "Mr. Chandler, what is your final destination?" I answered, "Well, heaven I hope." ****** And I do. Really. I am no atheist, my friend. I am a God fearing Agnostic. Though, I do think the world was a safer place when religion was the opiate of the masses instead of the amphetamine. But don’t worry, I’m not going to get all fundamentalist on you. I don’t like fundamentalists of any kind – including atheists. Them fundamentalist atheists, they done wanna capitalize the word God. I'm like, "Why not? Ya capitalize Huckleberry Finn don't ya?" And then they wanna take "One Nation under God" out of the pledge of allegiance. I don't have a problem with the phrase, " One Nation under God." What I have a problem with is… ...people pledging allegiance. What does " One nation under God " mean anyway? What does that make Australia? Are they more under God than we are? Is Canada "One nation on top of God?" Or is God all around us? Perhaps we should be, "One nation in the center of God?" Personally, I think we should be one nation getting over God. ****** And scientists – they don’t know. They are always trying to find some facts to fit some theory. They have been since Eve pulled the apple off the tree of knowledge and dropped it on Isaac Newton's head. But why an apple? I mean the bible never says. What if it were a banana? I bet a whole lot more people would read the bible if it had a snake talking to a naked chick getting her to inhale a Chiquita. And then He punishes the snake by making him crawl on his belly for the remainder of his days? I mean... ...he’s already a snake. I always thought it was ironic that the evil serpent is responsible for getting Eve to put her clothes ON! ****** My friend Brino always says, "I can count all the seeds in an apple, but who can count all the apples in a seed?" So what if it were a banana she ate? There would have been no Johnny Appleseed. There would have been a Johnny Banana seed – only bananas don’t have seeds. So, the guy would have gone around the country grafting banana stalks. William Tell would have shot a banana off his son’s head. I would be using a Banana iPhone. The Beatles would have released their records on Del Monte. Sir Isaac Newton would not have had his ‘eureka moment’ when an apple hit him in the head, he would have slipped on a banana peel. One day he's just walkin' along and his foot hits a banana peeling lying on the sidewalk. His foot goes up in the air, and he comes down -- KA-BAM! -- like an anvil in the road runner cartoon, which is where he comes up with the concept of gravity. The stars are circling around his head...and then he's staggering around all dazed and lookin’ all Charlie Sheen – liein' there on the ground lookin' up, (cuz we all know that both astronomers and Actors spend a lot of time on their backs) and he's lookin at all them stars and them constellations... He sees Andromeda... Aquarius... Buster Keaton. But with so many stars are spinning around his head that he concludes he is the center of the universe – and ya know what? He's right. ****** Not cuz he’s Sir Isaac Newton, but because the universe is infinite. From where ever you stand it is equal distance in any direction, and that by definition IS the center. ****** So because Eve eats a banana instead of an apple – we don’t get no we don’t get no big bang theory – we get the “God Slipped on a Big Banana Peel Theory.” If that were the case, hell, I'd believe in intelligent design. But the way I understand it, intelligent design is the most self centered concept human beings have ever come up with. I mean I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to belong to a universe that would have me as its center. I am the guy who said that people who believe life is great simply have nothing to compare it to. I say, “Life is short cruel and unfair.” But the good news is… it is equally unfair to everybody. So, the next time you are sitting there saying life is particularly unfair to you – get over it – cuz quite frankly, you are just not that special!

The Lousy Parts of Socialism There I was stuck in a traffic Jam on the highway to Hell... honkin’ my horn at the devil himself.... shoutin’, “Cant we get a move on?” We got half of us working a lousy construction job tryin’ to widen the highway to hell, and the other half workin’ on a more fuel efficient hand basket. Arguin’ with the bank over which one of us is more alive - us or them. But what do the banks know? They base how alive you are by what your credit rating is. Now, the banks have all failed and people windup with nothing. It’s like my friend Roger Manning used to say, "People work hard there whole lives – wind up with nothing. Me, I ain't got nothing but at least I didn’t work hard for it." In fact, not only are them banks not alive – they spend all their days and hours trying to kill anything that might resemble life. Giving us Service charges, Late fees, ATM Fees, Debit Card Fees, Over the limit fees... change your intrest rate from zero to forty percent and God knows ya can’t pay that - but you try - you’re an honest person - and then what do they do? The give ya a Bounced Fheck Fee. It is no wonder we are in this mess! We have based our entire economy on finding folks like me and you who are broke and then charging us for it! They actually look at us in the unemployment line and circle us like vultures sayin’, “We’ll get rich rich rich!” But what happens when the banks go broke? Their CEOS make a kings ransom while with their golden parachutes – I only wish it was a Real parachute made of gold - Like King Midas jumping out of a 727. Them banks are a bunch of deregulatory Robber Barons when they are making money. But Hell, Robber Barron ain't good enough for them… At least the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age Mellon, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller – they left us with concert halls, public libraries and museums all over the country – some of the finest buildings ever made. What do today's Robber Barron's leave us with? The Sam Walton Junior High Sports Complex in Texarkana, Arkansas? Put it next to Carnegie Hall – Hell you can hardly tell the difference. But as soon as today's robber barons start loosing money? They Change their tune! They become a bunch of socialist pinko bastards giving a hand job to the corpse of Khruschvev. But that ain’t a hard on - that’s rigor mortis. We only wind up with the lousy parts of socialism. I don’t want to own the banks, I want health care. They are always sayin’ on the news how Obama is some kinda socialist. Really? I wanna know one thing then? WHERE’S MY SOCIALISM!? Why didn’t he take over the banks? Then maybe we could ask them for service fees But since it’s you and me loaning them the money, I think we should be able to charge THEM for Service charges, Late fees, ATM Fees, Debit Card Fees, Over the limit fees... Bounced check fees. We'd be rich rich rich!

9th Ward New Orleans #4 I am in love with a drunk.   Oh sure she functions, like most drunks do. But, isn’t every drunk at least on some level a functional alcoholic? One man's dysfunctional is another man's high achiever.  Depends on your expectations, I guess, but I don’t think she has ever had a lot of those. It is both her beauty and her blemish.  She is easy.  She is Big Easy.  She has one of those jobs where people don’t mind if you show up late, and a little tipsy.  Odds are they’re tipsy too. They give her extra sick days – and don’t mind if when she calls in all raspy throated, saying “I’ve got the flu.”  (Which really means “I’m hung-over.”)   Part of it is she lives in a really rough neighborhood.  I guess she has to. After all she has been through, where else could she afford to live?   The worst of the worst show up on her door steps.  They use her, till she has little left to give. She has seen her best friends murdered, pistol whippings, break ins, muggings and worse.  She has seen it all.  Yet, even as hardened a street walker as she is – even she is shell shocked.    Sure, she manages to squeak by, She just doesn’t live up to her potential.  It would be one thing if she were one to go through this life as a dull flame -- content with dying at an early age of cirrhosis, having her greatest achievement be to take your order from behind the counter at a Popeye’s in Metairie.   But she is not that.  She never was.  In her day she inspired millions.  People still write songs about her, about what grand parties she throws, what a remarkable cook she is, and most of all, how great she looks at four in the morning wearing nothing but voodoo and fog.    She does throw a good party.  She gets dressed up. She wears a mask so ya can’t see the dark circles under her eyes. In the right light, she is exquisite.  It is in that moment that she will lure you in. She’ll get you drunk and take advantage of you.  But the next morning, when you wake up and see her with out the mask, make up kissed away, beads lying in the gutter being eaten by rats, she is sad. So sad, but still so beautiful.   A few years back, things got really bad for her, and we had to have an intervention.  Had to bring in the cops.  A lot of cops. We had her on suicide watch. While she was lying there at her most vulnerable, she was raped and left for dead on the side of the river.  It was tragic.  Truly Tragic. And their are people in this country that actually said, “She had it comin’. She was Askin’ for it.” It took weeks, months, years for her to come out of the coma. Sure her friends and loved ones sent her money, for a time – hoping to help in her recovery.  In fact, they came from all over the world to sit by her side. For a time.   But now, things are as bad as ever and no one is going to give her another dime.  Not that I blame them.  She squandered most of the money she was given. And what she didn’t squander, she was swindled out of.   She has always been so giving, for someone with such a propensity for trouble.  It makes her easy prey, and that has left her hard. Now, the sweetest lady in the world has turned mean.  She carries a gun. She has a habit. I’m afraid, she has crawled back inside a bottle, and even-though the cork has been removed, she is not coming out. She simply has no way to grant your wish. I’m afraid she may stay in the bottle for a long time, Singin’ Do You Know What it means to Miss New Orleans?   But still, I am in love with a drunk.

American Idle "I have seen the best minds of my generation...” writing ad copy. Tonight as I drown my sorrows in a beer ad, I think of Elliot, of Yates and Molière – what would they have made of it all? I wonder if they would be today's poets – the ones writing "This Bud's for you,” “I love you, man,” “and It don't get no better than this?" You know, the classics? Or would they be writing the TV shows them selves? Would they write "What biggest looser slouches down project runway waiting to be lost." 
Would they be sitting at the right hand of God. That’s the one where he holds the remote control. Cos, since the moment that God said, "Let there be light." And he hit the universal remote and a little white dot appeared on the giant surround sound television screen in the sky and Adam and Eve sat down – in their little fig leaf bathrobes on their little Fred Flintstone couches watching God's first mini-series – and they saw the constellations – and the stories began to unfold – and just like today, they would fall asleep to stories on TV. And the stories would dance in their dreams. They would be passed on from generation to generation. ‘til today we get "Dancing with the Stars." In fact, the constellations were the longest running show in human history - longer than The Guiding Light.  But then it got cancelled  by a new show called Smog.  So now people  go to sleep watching shows like American Idol  where the premiss is for the people to become "stars" that no longer exist. But our definition of star has become as distorted as our view of the night time sky in downtown Los Angeles. Why do you think every body in LA wants to be a star? Cos there are no stars. But people fall asleep watching that crap – and they dream a retched dream, poorly written, probably medicated, involving a creepy butterfly that flies into your room so you can visit Abraham Lincoln, a talking Gopher and a guy in a mute guy in an antique diving belle – you wind up in a threesome with Bob Barker and Drew Cary after a mysterious stranger shouts "Come on Down!" And you notice that Johnson Floor Wax retails for the same amount of money as Jiffy Pop Popcorn and noticing the innocuous anomaly you have to spin Libearchie’s own Catherine Wheel – until you find your self shouting, “The price is NOT right!” Even though the price is NOT right – we worship our entertainers – as long as they're famous. It is not like the days of the bard – where the wondering minstrel strolled from township to town, encampment to camp fire singing the stories of the village just over there - long before they were written down. Stories like… , The Torah and The Quran – Didn’t all three of those warn us about worshiping at a false American Idol? … and the famous? They’ll do anything to stay famous - They will go on talk shows to talk about how hard it is to be famous - how hard it is to be on the road... and they will stab each other in the back to take jobs as insipid game show hosts - or judges on contests that make no Talents... Famous… So I say, "Fame is for sissies!" Hell, It would be easy to be on the road for twenty-five years if you were famous. Doing one night stands. Staying in hotel rooms. Hot showers, Meals. Try doing it for twenty-five years when your passing the hat in a coffee house in North Dakota. It’s true with anything you love. And it’s not about fame. You may be the best widget maker in the world - and no one notices, so the guy in the assembly line next to you gets the promotion. You still have to find a way to keep being the best widget maker in the world. The only way to do that is to keep being the best widget maker in the world And tell stories about BEING the best widget maker… to your kids.

Stone Mountain, Georgia C Chandler In the year of my birth, Martin Luther King said in his I Had a Dream speech, "Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia." Because he longed for change to come to America. Martin Luther King mentioned my home town because at the time it was the home of a very powerful Ku Klux Klan reeking terror throughout the south land in which I was born. Because of the Klan, it is also the home of the world's largest carving – the Confederate Memorial where the stone images of the three Confederate leaders are indelibly chiseled to the side the mammoth slab of granite that inexplicably protrudes from the Georgia red clay larger than Mount Rushmore itself. It was on this site the modern Klan was formed in a ceremony that involved burning a cross from the mountain's summit. The inferno was so large it could be seen from the city of Atlanta some 20 miles away. The inferno it represented was much larger. The rebel revelers longed for no change to come to America. It was in that setting that I came into this world. I saw my town of three thousand grow on rally days to ten thousand hooded heroes march through the town as young girls through flowers at their feet. How could I not long to be among them. I did. Yes, I grew up a racist, how could I not? You could blame me. I was a kid. You could blame my parents but how could they know any better? Growing up in rural Alabama during the depression, it did not seem like a place that change was going to come to. You could blame my grand parents. My grandmother was sixty at Brown Vs. Board of Education. She did not know there needed to be change in America. Upon the outcome of Brown Vs Board of Education, the state of Georgia changed her state flag to add the Confederate battle flag as if to say, "Change was never going to come to America." I am probably the youngest person you will likely meet that went to a segregated school. In 1970 Jimmy Carter defeated Lester Maddox for governor and went about practically desegregating the last of the segregated schools. Change was coming to Georgia. I was in the first grade. 
 I played football on the first desegregated little league team in my county: The Central De Kalb 85 lb Packers. Before they were the Packers they were known as… yes… The Crackers. Donning a "University of Georgia G" on our helmets I found myself on the opposite end of the America I had known. I learned to depend on, play with, sacrifice for my black team mates. Team work. When The Packers played teams in counties more isolated than De Kalb I found my team and therefore myself on the receiving end of jeers and threats and even getting into sand lot brew-ha-has defending… defending.. well, my team but vicariously desegregation. Change is a foot (lets give it a hand.) 
The white flight that inevitably parallels a growing city blew right past Stone Mountain leaving in its wake a suburban black middle class. The words "Stone Mountain" were on the pages of the New York Times for a second time in her history when the town that Martin Luther King singled out elected a black mayor. Change was brewing in America. Only some old timer whites remain. My mother is one of them. I came to visit her recently. At the corner of Rockbridge Road and Cynthia McKinney Blvd (another African American that ran for president this year) there is a shell station down the street from my mother's house. A young African American man approached me wearing his mall bought Negro League baseball jersey (made in Bangladesh) and blood-diamond bling saying, "You have no idea where you is." I do. One visible sign that change is at hand is that a black teenager was willing to take a ride with a middle aged oddly clad bald white man. I took him to the old city hall, now a museum. I showed him the bell presented to the town by the King foundation to let Freedom Ring. I took a drink from the colored water fountain I would not have been allowed to drink from as a child. He in turn drank from the "white." Parts of my childhood I am glad to have relegated to the annals of small town museums. The city of Stone Mountain carried the first Black American President but not the state of Georgia. But more importantly he carried the nation, and… the vote of my mother. "Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia." But this does not mean that Change has come to America. For also in that famous speech, “We will not be satisfied.” 50 Years ago a black family was ten times as likely to live in poverty. Today, that number has barely budged. For 50 Years ago today, A black male was 5 times as likely to wind up in Prison as his white counterpart. Today: Six times as likely. and it is a similar scenario when it comes to highschool graduation, college education, and meaningful employment. so today I too have a dream. I say let Freedom Ring from the San Quentin of California. Let Freedom Ring from the Angola of Louisiana and The Rikers Island of New York. Let Freedom Ring From the Harvard University of Massachusetts, and the Duke of North Carolina. From the Boise County Community College of Idaho and the Benjamin Franklin High-school of Arkansas. Let Freedom Ring from the Oakland Police Department and the court rooms of Sanford Florida.

Victoria Victoria knows, that all that I have is written on napkins, and brown paper bags. But she doesn’t care, she is an island. She holds me in the arms of the sea. Youth and age ambition and apathy divide us like amoebas and galaxies. Many times our paths cannot parallel for very long.   As Einstein pointed out, all straight lines in this round universe must intersect. Which also means that once they have intersected, they are from that point forever... ...diverging.   
 On this side of the bookend I find myself with the same choice as the other end All of my life’s story in between.   I could quit the road and be rewarded. With family, community and stability, and believe me, I have contemplated all the pros and amateurs of freedom's inadequacies. Victoria knows, that all that I have is written on napkins, and brown paper bags held inside a tinderbox that flashes like the Hindenburg. leaving me cowering in fear of all that is combustible. Because love is a leaky gas line that leaves you dizzy, and I like to smoke cigarettes after sex, and if sparks fly, "Oh, the humanity!" But Victoria doesn’t care, She is an island. She holds me, in the arms of the sea. 
But the muses are far worse than the tinderboxes. For the muse manages to reach into your chest, and pull out your heart, arteries attached.   You have no choice but to follow, or the arteries will become detached, and you will surely die.   

You must follow your heart, or you will surely die. Through a darkened wood, deserted street corners, abandoned parking lots and seedy motel rooms, places that you would not normally choose to be, but there you are. So lost from following the muse that when she finally gives you your heart back (which is what muses do) you are so lost you will never find your way back.   She leaves you wishing you had only paid attention in anatomy class, so you would have a clue as to how to put the thing back in. 

You stand, heart in hand. You can feel it throb in your fingertips. You realize how alone you really are, with your life, and only your life, in your hands. For when you follow the muse – your life may be all that you will ever have.

Now, I sit in an alchie bar in Vancouver writing on napkins and brown paper bags Victoria Knows that is all that I have. Wishing she had never taught me what a muse really is.   And now my heart is no longer in my hands. It sits on the bar -my arteries wrapped around my wrists. One hand clinched to a tumbler full of Jameson’s, the other to a pen scribbling on a napkin this very poem. Hoping that - this time - what the muse really had to show me was: an anatomy class. But Victoria does not care. She is an Island. She holds me, in the arms of the sea.

Would You Die For a Necktie? (thoughts on fabric #2) I was riding along. Listening to the radio - the kind of song that my parents would have listened to - if I had been a different person... ...when I look out the window and see this box of used clothing - 80’s style - polo shirts, men’s suits with padded shoulders and gothic lines - Reagan era beauties cast out to the sidewalk looking stunned at the new era. I began having a crisis of my own mortality and I thought... ...After we die - do our souls laugh about our cast off bodies the way we light snicker over a dated neck tie? Will our most passionate beliefs seem nothing more than a big pair of silly shoes that we loved in our youth? Will we seem as fatuous as the once fashionable on the cover of an old record album found in a junk store? More and more my convictions seem to dangle from me like a wide neck tie - 70’s type - nylon - tied in a Windsor knot, thick as a cowbell beneath my chin. Some people have convictions for which they’ll kill. They’ll claim that the cloth of their convictions was cut from the omnipotent tailor above. We select from his line and model ourselves in convictions - some millenniums old... ...Some as serious as the buckle on the shoes of a 17th century puritan... ...Some as ridiculous as the intergalactic-A-GoGo gear of Star Trek aliens (original series of course.) Would you die for a necktie? Would you kill for views that in the future will look as ridiculous as platform shoes? Would you kill others for beliefs that one day will look as silly as a hair piece by Si Sperling? Ancient people believed that fate was basically a fashion designer... ...spinning the yarns of destiny on a loom of time. All was preordained by some cruel cosmic Calvin Klien. Today, fallen angels of fabric that we are... ...we ignore the fashion tips of the gods and outfit our selves in outfits of our own design... ..the Haute Couture of freewill. Still, somehow it is our free will that leaves us standing in cheap materials - sewn in some cheap sweat shop in an exploitive country - distant with in ourselves. We sit mournful and numb before a whirl of sewing machines - underpaid, confused by our condition - dreaming, forever dreaming of the black silky oblivion of sex - the unknown fabric of life and death. Ninety percent of the universe is made of an unknown fabric - dark matter. The same percentage exists in in our minds. Ninety percent of the dark matter in our brains we do not use. There is endless potential for new design. First you must not mind the endless cutting and tearing of fabric. Endlessly submitting yourself to the crucifixion nails of needle and bobbin. There should be no doubt that the deafening whir of sewing machines seems less tragic than killing and dying for last year's design. Oh angels of fabric please lead me far away from this scotching polyester waste land where I currently exist... ...For I have seen the holy tablets... ...and I'm on God's worst dress list. By Phil Rockstroh and Chris Chandler Originally Published in Protection from All This Safety (1996) and on the album with Dan Bern Collaborations (1998) and with Paul Benoit So, Where Ya Headed (2009)

Wyoming I was driving through Wyoming when my GPS stopped working. It… it… made me mad. 

"WHAT?! No coverage," I thought.

I remembered my first trip through rural Wyoming twenty-five years ago. I was just starting to book gigs and I HAD to make a phone call to New York City. Only the signs on the highway read "NO FOOD, NO SERVICES, NO PHONE," and they meant it.

When I finally found one it was literally a single phone booth in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by giant rocks and a sky as big as Canada. There were a couple of cars parked and a line of people waiting to use it. There was a bench to wait on. 
Just twenty years ago big swaths of this country did not even have pay phones. These days you can't find a pay phone either, but it is for very different reasons. 
Oh, how we love to reminisce the ‘good old days’ – the ones that never were. 
 The days that we tattoo on our psyches, or maybe even our bodies to remember a particular moment in time. I remember as a kid, there was a guy in my elementary school with a tattoo. I was afraid of him, yet wanted to be like him. It was actually the first tattoo I had ever really scene close up. It was a skull with a jester's cap. I am not from this new generation of suburban white rebels that have made tattos ubiquitous by opening parlors between the TJ Maxx and the Cinnabon at the shopping mall. And the Skull with the Jester’s Cap? The Grateful Dead were not exactly a part of my child hood. The Jerry Garcia Transformer Robot Doll had not yet been marketed. The image disturbed me for years, but then I thought, “What do you want your legacy to be? A skull with a Jester's Cap? What could be better? Living your life making people laugh. And when you die – your still doing it.”

The tattoo grew in my head. It became elaborate, decorated, bejeweled - magnificent. To this day, when ever I see a tattoo, it was always pales in comparison to my memory of the one I had seen as a child.
 Recently, I was in my hometown when I ran into the kid with the tattoo. I got the chance to tell him how much the image had meant to me - that I had spent the past twenty years of my life traveling across the country, trying to make people laugh, and I hoped that after I died, I’d still be doing it. 
I managed to talk him into taking his shirt off so I could see it. And there it was in all its... ...reality. It looked like a prison tattoo. Thin pale blue lines sagging from aging flesh. He said he had done it him self with a sewing needle and a ball point pen and was considering getting it removed. I thought, “The fool disappears – Laughter is shunned – not from decay – but from vanity. and in this case...laser surgery.” Now, the reason I had been in my home town was to visit my mother, who was againg aging. My siblings had called me and told me it was time to come visit and I did. Only once I got there, I managed to catch a stomach virus. I found myself in bed – my childhood bed -- there was a picture of me as a teenager on the wall as well as some painting I had made in college and sent it to her her as a Christmas gift. It is really ugly. I looked down the hall, and there she was. She had gotten out of bed her self and was now struggling down the hall with her walker, Oxygen tubes trailing behind her - carrying a bowl of chicken noodle soup. She put a thermometer in my mouth. It was the same one she had placed in my mouth as a child. A hundred and three degrees. She struggled to lean over – clutching to the walker to wipe my fore head with a cool wash cloth.

Oh, how the tables turn. I had come home to help take care of her, but she found strength from my illness. It was the only time in my life I was glad to be sick. The only thing I could do was to lay back and savor the taste of chicken noodle soup because I knew... ...It would be the last time my mother would ever mother me.