"Gentle on my Mind" stuck in my mind

For weeks I haven't been able to get Glen Campbell's version of John Hartford's "Gentle on my Mind" out of my head. If better lyrics have been written, I haven't heard them:

It's knowin' that your door is always open
And your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleepin' bag
Rolled up and stashed behind your couch
And it's knowin' I'm not shackled
By forgotten words and bonds
And the ink stains that have dried upon some line
That keeps you in the back roads
By the rivers of my memory
That keeps you ever gentle on my mind

It's not clingin' to the rocks and ivy
Planted on their columns now that bind me
Or something that somebody said because
They thought we fit together walkin'
It's just knowing that the world
Will not be cursing or forgiving
When I walk along some railroad track and find
That you're movin' on the back roads
By the rivers of my memory
And for hours you're just gentle on my mind

Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines
And the junkyards and the highways come between us
And some other woman's cryin' to her mother 'cause she turned and I was gone
I still might run in silence
Tears of joy might stain my face
And the summer sun might burn me till I'm blind
But not to where I cannot see
You walkin' on the back roads
By the rivers flowin' gentle on my mind

I dip my cup of soup back from a gurglin' cracklin' cauldron
In some train yard
My beard a rustlin' coal pile
And a dirty hat pulled low across my face
Through cupped hands 'round a tin can
I pretend to hold you to my breast and find
That you're waitin' from the back roads
By the rivers of my memory
Ever smilin', ever gentle on my mind

A snippet from the journal - incident in Berkeley

Overslept on this slightly cool, unexpectedly clouded, September morning. Driving to the bay area and back, and not arriving home ‘till eightish, throws off my inner clock, and besides I’d arrived home hungry, after only having had appetizers there at the Hotel Durant instead of a full fledged dinner, though I also indulged, riskily for a driver and setting a poor example for my daughter, in a pair of yummy draft IPA’s (Racer 5’s, for you hopaphiles) which seem to have quickly settled into the jiggly pluff growing above my belt buckle where there was once muscle mass as my Knee Problem continues persistently and disconcertingly. I’d actually told myself, quite convincingly, that the knee was Getting Better, and was even starting to believe it, feeling just the slightest of twinges and getting in and out of my car normally and even following Elsie up and down hills and stairs as she led me across campus to see her office and meet her work mates. But alas, my freshly-fledged optimism evaporated when instinctively I made my usual move as a pedestrian (an alpha-male pedestrian, that is) to scurry across the street in front of traffic with the light changing and I got about half-way across the street when I pushed with my bad leg and felt something in the knee stretch and pull, and felt a white-hot burn and suddenly there I was stranded in the middle of the street as engines were revving with only one good leg and the other which was suddenly limp and hurting like hell and I wanted to call a time out but that didn’t seem to be an option so I hobbled with as much dignity, and alacrity, as I could, hopping on my good leg and dragging my virtually useless left leg behind me like a recalcitrant child, with the crowd of vastly more sensible pedestrians I left on the curb behind me no doubt wondering what on earth that crippled-up old fart had been thinking. And also on the curb behind me the clear tones of my sweet younger daughter, laughing.

Reminisces of kisses...

My friend Hap Hazard challenged KVMR listeners to come up with some reminisces of kisses for his full-moon Friday Espresso Magazine radio show. So I came up with a few, and could have come up with quite a few more since the really good kisses, you never forget. And the best part was having Ellen come downstairs in the office when he was reading the one about her and me in Santa Cruz and the kiss I got when she realized that couple he was talking on the radio about that sounded so familiar was actually us. So here's what I sent to Hap:

Okay, Hap, here’s a few first efforts at this very compelling theme…

A few of first kisses occurred to me off the top of my head: first, Joanie, that endlessly alluring friend of my (one year) younger sister who for some unknown reason liked this slightly older geek brother of her best friend and took some time out from her project of sleeping (utterly unbeknownst to me) with absolutely every other unattached boy in Watsonville High School to show this young man a thing or two about kissing and yes! I did have a thing or few to learn and, with Joanie's assistance, learn them I did.

And I remember at a party with Leah in high school in the sixties. We were both too green to roll joints yet, so we both just massaged out the tobacco from Marlboro cigarettes and somehow packed the flaccid cylinders back with pretty potent (for the time) pot. And smoked it to our mutual satisfaction and then made out to stroboscopic lights and Cream and Hendrix for the rest of the evening. And I didn’t think I needed any more sex than that ever, that seemed more than enough mystery in those endless kisses to keep me venturing forth for a lifetime.

And, finally, that first week or two with my future wife, when (God I hope my children don’t read this and recognize me right off) the sex was great but the kissing, my God, the kissing was fantastic, I could stand on Pacific Street there in Santa Cruz and our kissing would become an opera in which I was fully self-expressed and she was as well and there was nothing we couldn’t say from the utter depths of our hearts that wasn’t purely heard and perfectly understood from the utter depths of the other. And I remember some incredible, never-to-be repeated show at the Catalyst that we both missed, deliriously, happily, because we were both too busy kissing. And, praise God, thirty-five years later, we still are.

Thanks for asking, Hap.

Brian