Please allow me to introduce myself…
When you meet me on the street you might laugh, or you might feel intimidated, or will perhaps jaywalk across the busiest street in town to avoid catching cooties from the fruitcake. You might avoid eye contact. Just maybe, you might smile back. You might gawk.
I’m on the tall side, even taller in my boots. I always wear boots, one of three pair, depending upon which of my twenty-three hats I choose for the day, though most likely you’ll meet me in my Scala Dakota. Sometimes you’ll catch me in a derby, or a stetson half dome. I reserve my bowler and my porkpie only for gigs. My straw and felt Stetsons attend me at rodeos and fairs. Each of my other hats serves a particular utility.
Today, and for every other day until the sun remains this side of the clouds for more than a few seconds, you’ll meet me in my Carhartt and a plaid flannel shirt—always a pair of blue jeans (I have nothing else) and my light color leather belt with the guitar buckle.
You’ll meet me and the word “cowboy” will undoubtedly come to mind, maybe “redneck,” though from the years 2001 to 2007 my hair, often in a ponytail, reached my waist. From 1997 to 2002, a closely trimmed beard and mustache etched my face. Now, I just wear a permanent haze of salt and pepper stubble.
I stroll town, with thick heels you’ll hear coming from two blocks away. I will look like a cowboy. I gig, frequently looking like a Robert Crumb cartoon. I sit around the house looking like a lumberjack. I workout at the gym in a black hensley, black sweats, dark shoes, and black lifting gloves—ninja style. My wardrobe is dark. I wear a lot of black.
Chances are, you’ll meet me on the street, or at a gig. You don’t know where I live, and I’m in and out of the gym in less than an hour and twenty minutes. I walk around town a lot, because my studio sits on one of the busiest corners downtown Corvallis, near all my favorite shops.
Don’t be surprised to meet me in the little bookshop; I stop there to browse and chat three times a week. You might meet me in one of two bakeries, or walking back and forth from the coffee shop. You might see me without a hat, eating at an Indian restaurant, perhaps gigging if not eating at a Mexican restaurant. You’ll catch me without my Carhartt in one of two music stores, because I don’t play guitars wearing things with zippers.
But no matter where you meet me, you will immediately think “cowboy” or “redneck.” You might even go so far as to think “white Anglo-saxon, gun toting Republican conservative, rifle hung across the back window of his big ol’ truck, with a big-hair filly waiting obediently at the nail shop while he bellies to the bar for a Bud with some good ‘ol boys.”
It won’t matter that underneath the clothes I’m naked like everyone else, that I abhor guns and war, never cared for the GOP or Libertarians, and recently became disillusioned with Democrats. It won’t matter that I sit zazen everyday, read the dharma daily, and chant kirtan when I can. It won’t matter, if after our first meeting we become friends, that the first thing you’ll see in my house is a wall of books, mostly medieval lit, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, with lots of poetry, and a section for Earth and astronomy, all tucked, stashed, crammed and stacked with too many knickknacks, mostly little gargoyles, more Hotei than you’d want to count, and a collection of wooden Pinocchios of varying sizes. It won’t matter that my wife’s original paintings adorn the walls, or that the walls of our spare room display a Jolly Roger and an assortment of other pirate stuff just above another over-stacked bookshelf.
Nothing past or future will matter except what you think when you first meet me.
So if you meet me have some courtesy,
have some sympathy and some taste,
‘cause maybe what you think I am
is what I really ain’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment