This started out as a message to a friend who just survived a major tornado.
In addition to thoughts and prayers, I’m taking a personal moment to say thanks out loud. Thanks to know you, thanks that you and yours are OK, thanks that I can be part of this entire great mystery. Sometimes I don’t understand a minute of it. I survived a house fire back in Green Bay 2002ish. We’re all standing outside on the next door neighbor’s lawn and a 6 year old I’ll never forget looks up at me and says, “Oh my God Marco, I hope your classical is OK.” She knew how much more important that guitar was to me than my other guitars. She said a mouthful. I’m attached to many things including that ’50s hand made Mexican, etc. But even among those guitars, and everything else I possess, my immediate thought was to look around and see that each and every one of us was relatively OK, and know that that means sooooooooo much more.
Oh, and my corner of the house was just fine. The smoky smells around those guitars are milder than I’d prefer I think. Because if it reeked every time I opened a guitar case, I’d most likely tell this whole story more often!
Wow, why did I wait so long to tell people again? Thanks for being you, Darryl.
I’ll add one other event that blogging this has brought back to me.
I was staying in Corbin Harney’s trailer in Oregon. He was still alive, but living in Nevada or California somewhere doing all the great things he does. I felt honored to be told I can stay at his place as long as I want, just that if he ever needs it I’ll have to use a tent outside of it for him. Of course. Well one of those nights I slept through a very rocky, windy, turbulent storm. I’d burned Sage before I went to bed.
On that land, we always used to wake up with the Sun and sing morning prayers, etc.
Well that morning I was awakened by more than just, “time to get up,” like normal.
“Marco, are you ok?”
Of course I’m fine, I thought. What are they worried about. Maybe I dreamed the whole storm, I remember thinking, and joking that maybe I touched back down at Dorothy’s place in Kansas. Well I didn’t know the half of it!!! I got up, and looked around outside to get in a good space for ceremony; but was given some serious pause around me. A Quonset hut up the hill with a bunch of storage stuff was completely upside down. The huge antique mash tent next to it was blown all around a bit too but intact. The path of destruction turned up dirt, rocks, branches everything in its way as it winded down the hill straight at me where I slept until it got to the stream between the cyclone and me. Well this crooked little dust devil banged a left right at that stream followed it past me until a point where the stream turned and he didn’t where he continued on straight away from there.
Thank you God! Thank you Corbin, thank you Sage, and thank you Darryl for bringing all these memories back to me.
Darryl at CDBaby
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/tonemah
Video which shows the stream and Corbin’s trailer as it sits nowadays
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