Bob Dylan

Dreams

December 2, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz 1 Comment

Bob Dylan once said that if “my thought dreams could be seen, they would probably put my head in a guillotine.” I know people who put their dreams on Facebook or better yet in group email lists meant for other purposes. Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. If you see what I mean.

I read a poem the other day by a famous American poet. Didn’t understand damn near anything in it but for this: “If you cook like the way you walk, Chiquita, I will eat it down to the husk.” He said that right after he said that the substance of lack was the prime substance of desire. And then he mentioned that a child beggar in a South American village was looking up at him, pointing to his own mouth.

I remember my dreams. I still have them. To remind me, I suppose, of distances “which are not near,” places to which I drove myself until, for no good reason(as if there ever are “good” reasons) I was left with no choice but to leave. I now wake from my night dreams in fear of earlier guillotines and death dealing husks choked down in doorways of imagined Mexican chapels somewhere along the way. The substance of loss is the prime substance of salvation. Providing, of course, that you can keep it down.

They Weren’t There Again Today

May 25, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

“Well, I keep seeing this stuff and it just comes a-rolling in/And you know it blows right through me like a ball and chain…” Bob Dylan said that. Apparently it is a Bob Dylan kinda day. Mostly I take pictures of people running; mostly I do it on the trails and in the high country. Sometimes I go to the high sage desert or some flat land mirage. But sometimes all I can see are the people who are not there. The empty seats and the overgrown grass, the listing fences and rolling clouds speak to me of spring time goin’ summer somewhere else, the next generation of the ‘boys of summer’ finding another “field of dreams” on which to slide toward old age. A dyin’ stadium is filled with ghosts and some mornings they are my only companions on the early morning run into the sunrise. I stop sometimes and listen close. I pretend to hear the hot dog vendors and smell the popcorn but mostly I just keep runnin’ because the ghosts aren’t out there, are they, and they aren’t waitin’ around. It ain’t sad and Lord knows it ain’t lonely come sunrise out here, it’s just another day on the road to wherever it is I am goin’.

Tarmac Meditations- Rest Day

November 5, 2010 By longrun Leave a Comment

Rest day. No running; well no running unless I can’t stand it. A good bet for now. Migraine, bad juju I think, too much thinking, not enough acting, too little clarity, too little, too often. “…Too much of nothin’ makes a fellow mean…”( The Mighty Quinn according to Bob Dylan)On the other hand, it is what I have made of it, the running, the writing, the shooting and like that. So it must be in my own hands to at least do the footwork…seat of the pants in the seat of the chair, quit yer whinin’ and write something, anything. In an hour or two you can go chop some wood, literally and then you can rearrange the weights, move the bench, do the laundry, sell something to some one , anyone, eat lunch a spoonful of complex carbs at a time, vacuum the living room, edit the last post, drift across the universe in a facebook space module, quit whinin’, send out the rent check(late), hang the micro fibre, dry the other stuff, gaze out the window, gaze at my own navel, shift the fleet up the coast ( as if), write some more. Nap. The road leads somewhere, even when I can’t see for looking. Keeping the faith, lifting your eyes to whatever you believe in, taking your medicine, literally and otherwise and keeping it tight. A rest day? Not so much.