Jaws of Life

The James McMurtry CD I've been listening to repeatedly - while unpacking, sorting, and shelving books in the office/workshop, as the finite hours of my finite life go by - has a bunch of well-crafted, reflective songs and one or two real knockouts. Is it a coincidence that the best songs grapple with ghosts of the past, missed opportunities, and flat-out mistakes? Sure.

The record is called "It had to happen," and maybe that's McMurtry's conclusion in coming to terms with years of lugging around his own personal baggage. And there's a lot to be said for accepting what can't be changed. I'm not so sure myself. In his own words, "I keep my distance the best I can, living out my time here in Never-neverland, I can't grow up, cause I'm too old now" (Peter Pan). That I can relate to - one of those great lines that even a competent writer can hang an entire song on. And he's more than competent.

Another line from another song (Stancliff's Lament) that gets me: "It's behind you, it's behind you, the worst was over long ago." Leafing through the refuse of my academic and occupational past and the textual evidence thereof, it's a relief to weed out the excess and recycle it, put the keepers away in a file drawer, lighter by about two-thirds, knowing I don't have to go through it again. But I have to ask: if the worst is over, is the best over too? (My good buddy Bob used to quote Dickens when we were helping each other survive graduate school: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.")

There's a perverse kind of pleasure in going through all those old class rosters, meeting minutes, grade sheets, syllabi, outlines, keeping the papers and tossing the notes. I strangely enjoy unpacking boxes of books and finding shelf space to put them in some kind of order. Zelda stopped by last night and asked what my system was: fiction here, nonfiction there, one shelf for art, one for education, one for sport, one for history, two for philosophy, a long row of smaller paperbacks, two shelves of children's books. There must be a librarian gene somewhere in this family. I won't alphabetize or catalog, but it is reassuring to look up and see like items together.

I guess this is where I take note that Gven and I have known each other for 30 years. The anniversary of our first meeting came and went two weeks ago; that's what the fireworks were all about the weekend of the Fourth. Do the math: we first laid eyes on each other the weekend of the bicentennial, and nothing has been the same since. One tends to look back - and forward - at times like this, and if one is a complete fool and a glutton for punishment, one tends to rethink some of the crucial decisions one has made and assess the damage.

We've had a great adventure that so far only gains texture and depth as it continues. The callow youth that ran into the bright-eyed redhead in Atlanta in 1976 has had time to mature since that fateful day - but decided against it. Some powerful forces were at work and still are, so like McMurtry's last and best song (Jaws of Life), "It makes no difference what you thought or who you are, you still get caught in the jaws of life."