Pacifically Speaking
Woke up in the bus this morning by the Pacific Ocean - “the
big pacific ocean where the sun sinks in the west” as Woody
Guthrie used to sing, except where I am the sun rises in the
East over the ocean. South Golden Beach was deserted except
for a lone figure doing yoga - her salute to the sun. The
star crawled from the skin of the earth and it took me a
moment to realize that I (and the earth) were moving and the
sun was stationary. As the planet revolved so my spirits rose
with the dawn and it felt great (once more) to be alive. Each
day I greet the dawn and each day the sun-God descends into my
spirit and (re) makes me whole. Gratitude, gratitude, what a
blessing it is to be able to feel grateful! I sat and mused
about the Grateful Dead and smiled - the dawn always makes me
think of them! Their music is forever associated (in my mind)
with the sun-rise.
The Grateful Dead are now simply The Dead. An interesting
decision. Are they no longer Grateful? Apparently (I have
heard) none of the people who worked for them for so long are
involved in their latest venture - it’s a whole new ball-game.
I’d love to hear some of the new music they’re making and (of
course) it’s great to see them still wanting to play together.
I look forward to The Dead and the Rolling Stones playing
when they’re in their nineties - why not? Hopefully someone
will read this and let me know how I can get to hear some of
the new live music. Now that would be a treat for an old
Romany in his vardo with the superb sound-system turned up
full blast and me lying back in Raja-like splendor.
Bring it on!!!
Anyway, I left the beach and headed back to the bus and
decided to write when the computer bleeped and there on
Skype was an old friend wanting to speak.
Sylvia in North Carolina.
We had been lovers at the end of the sixties and then I
had left England to go to America with the Rolling Stones.
Through the “miracle” of Facebook she tracked me down some
forty years later, and here we are talking to one-another
after four decades. What amazing tales we have to share of
our respective lives. The tragedies and failures, the joys
and the despairs. Children born and prematurely deceased,
grandchildren, husbands, wives, relationships. Through the
miracle of the internet we have been communicating for a
couple of months now - me in a motor home wandering
through Australia, her in an apartment in the States.
The world is, indeed, a very small village.
And Facebook has been responsible for my getting back in
touch with people I haven’t spoken to in years! People whom
I have always carried in my heart. Charles and Harris and
John Welder and Dick Jones and his sister Libby in Texas,
Slade and his son, Jeff Dexter in England who was supposed
to be the announcer at the Stones concert in Hyde Park in
1969 and arrived late to find me doing the job! Old friends
from long ago, from a past that seems as remote as the moon.
And the fortieth anniversary of the moon-landings is coming up,
and once again I see the film footage of the descent to the
lunar surface and the unfurling of the American flag on the
television in my motor-home and there it is! The conspiracy
theorists main claim that the landing was ‘faked’ in front of
my eyes. Everything throws shadows, the lunar lander, the man
in the space-suit, except that is the flag, which sits still
and unmoving, stiff as a corpse, with NO shadow ! It’s enough
to make a man think!
And I force myself to return from these “dreams of yesterday”
to the here and now. With a book to write and work to be done.
But the sun is shining and it’s a glorious day. In the
distance the Byron Bay lighthouse sits a thin crisply white
needle on the Easternmost tip of continental Australia - I am
as far East as I can be without getting my feet wet. Any
further East and I’d be walking on water! I have lived in
California and seen the sun sink over the Pacific, I am living
in Australia and now I can watch the sun rise over the same
Ocean. How fortunate I have been in this life, how blessed and
favored by the Great Architect. I think I shall can the
writing for today, gather a towel and some water to drink, and
head for the beach. It’s time to give thanks, to express some
gratitude. At the water’s edge I will sing an inner song for
creation and wonder at the highways and bi-ways that have led
me to this beautiful place called Planet Earth.
This world is a beautiful hotel.
I’m a contented ‘guest’ but( I remind myself) there’s always
a bill to be paid for first class accommodation. But the beach,
the sun and the sky are there for us all - rich or poor this
is, indeed, our Garden of Eden - hope it’s around long enough
for my children to enjoy it!
