Lightnin' Hopkins - Double Blues

My home is built upon 5,500 feet of superimpacted memories -- layer upon layer of sedimentary dreams and thoughts, one folded upon the other until the landscape emerges into the cold air in deeply-carved crinkles reminiscent of a discarded bedsheet.

My memories roll with the land in waves where the light casts long, dark shadows between rows of crests.

Memories... remember when we used to visit the old breakfast diner on 20th street in Denver? Eggs, bacon, hash browns and coffee -- all for less than six bucks. And I would sit there at the window and stare out at that windswept stretch of 20th, coffee steaming wide.

I remember the precise gleam of the Greyhound in autumn light as it passed, first moment's gleam of a long, lonely haul to Chicago, kicking dried leaves in its wake.

The 20th st. diner was a grimy joint, a real Lightnin' Hopkins sort of place. This was the place where arteries came to die. Ah, but what a death, child.

My landscape is mountains and dry brush; Hopkins sings of an altogether different emotional topography. His is a deep south of roads, shacks and shame that sizzles hard on the skillet.

Listen to me, son. Ol' Lightnin' is the voice of God. There is no disputing that.

Paolo Nutini - These Streets

Somewhere near the plaza, you'll see a set of crumbling stone steps. Here, the weary traveler may sit unmolested and enjoy the warm mountain sunlight. And if you visit in the autumn months, you'll see a man sitting there alone, peeling an orange. Sometimes he smokes a cigarette. He wears a straw fedora hat, brown trousers and a beat pair of sandals. His countenance – well, I’ll let you witness that for yourself. Suffice to say that I didn't believe in the saints until that moment...

There are days when the air crackles with energy. You savor that. For me, it happens in the fall, when the weather and leaves are crisp. Everything sparks at the touch. This is when I feel most alive – when the year is in the throes of death. This is when I saw him.

He too was entering the winter of his life. He’d achieved that magisterial calm, that unbreakable peace, that resignation. A distillation of decades of hardship. I stared at his wormwood hands, his fingernails splintering at the tips.

And this is what I ponder as I sit a little farther up those stairs, tucked in a desolate cafe. The old man is gone now, but I think: may we live to be as ripe, and if we do, may we be allowed to sit on the steps in peace; may we enjoy the sun as it warms our scraggly stubble and our craggy dispositions. And when the time comes, may I blow away and be forgotten, like so many brittle leaves in the season’s waning…