The Death of Clifford Johnson, School and the Bobster

I was talking to Vrn yesterday evening and she told me a story of how when she recently came back from New York, her mother and herself drove by Walgreens in Alachua and saw a man dead on the road who had just been run over.  Several nights ago, I was playing basketball with AV, Shyam and several of Shyam's friends including Kana, who related the following story about the same man.  Apparently, during the weekend, a drunk man in his fifties approached Kana in front of Danino's in downtown Alachua and asked him for a quarter.  When Kana said he didn't have any money the man was polite, "Next time I see you and have money, I'm going to buy you a beer," the man said.  "Sorry, I'm not old enough to legally drink yet," Kana said.  "That's all right," the man stammered.  "My name is Clifford Johnson.  What's your name, anyway, son?"  "Kana," Kana said.  "Kona?" the man said.  "No, Kana"  "Kina?" "No, Kana."  Finally the man got it.  "Kana,"  he said and kept repeating "Kana, Kana, Kana," as he walked away.  No more than a minute or two later, Kana heard a loud screech and a thud.  When he got to the accident scene, he also saw the man dead, his last words being possibly Kana, which is a nickname for baby Krishna.  It is well known in the Vedic literatures, that if one utters or hears the name of God at the time of death, one elevates their position in their next destination.

Yesterday was what I call Massive-Wednesday, referring to my heavy load of school.  I came very close to not going to my Geology class.  I sat out in my car in the Santa Fe parking lot and tried to convince myself it would be all right not to go.  I was tired from not much sleep the night before and already had a full day of school.  The rebel in me just wanted to blow it off.  After Geology class would also come a three-hour Geology lab. Radha thinks I complain too much about Geology Lab.  "What's the big deal, Dad," she says.  "You're complaining about a f_ing field trip."  First of all, I'm not big on science and second of all eight straight hours of school is not like working an eight-hour job.  It's mentally exhausting and doesn't end there.  After class there is much homework to do.  So I sat there, contemplating dropping Geology and taking another science online during the summer to finish up, thus reducing my work load, and going to journalism school in the Spring of 2010 instead.  Let's just say I was one fried puppy.  Every time I picked a Tarot card, however, it advised going to class.  I picked cards again and again.  Only positive cards came up when I asked what the result would be if I went, and only negative cards  came up when I asked what the result would be if I did not go.  The cards helped to change my mind, something that an intelligent look at the situation could have done by itself.  Still, sometimes I am confused and the cards have never steered me wrong.  "Okay, I'm going to go but only to Geology and not to the lab," I thought.    Besides, I'm feeling under the weather, anyway, and can just say I feel ill and dismiss myself."  So, I trudged toward the X-Building calculating all the possibilities inside my head.

Even though I have taken on a heavy load this semester, I have to look at it like it's a job.  If I don't show up, my pay is going to get docked, pure and simple.  Some classes I can skip once in a while where the work load and subject matter are not so difficult.  I walked out of American Government class yesterday, for example, because the teacher didn't show up for the first half-an-hour of class. Whether or not he showed later, I will eventually find out, but I knew it didn't matter because I have a high "A" in the class and he is very light on student work load.  My Geology teacher, on the other hand, announced that the exam would be pushed a class back and then tried to compensate the good news by saying "We'll have to make the test extra hard to make sure you guys don't get complacent.  The sad thing is, I don't think he was joking.  He is probably going to take what was an already difficult test and tweak it to an even higher degree of difficulty.

For all you Bob Dylan fans out there, there is great news.  On April 28th, the Bobster releases the new studio album Together Through Life.  About it, Mojo journalist Michael Simmons writes, "Yet what I heard [on the album] offered ample proof of an artist steeped in the past but throughly living in the present, cognizant of everything, not afraid to point fingers or laugh at fools or fall in love."  As to how it all came about, Uncut's Allan Jones writes, "Dylan had been asked by the French film director Olivier Dahan, who made the Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie En Rose, which Dylan had apparently liked, to write songs for his new movie My Own Love Song.

Dylan duly cam up with a ballad called "Life is Hard," and was so inspired that the next thing anyone knew he'd written nine more new songs, and not long after that- bingo!- here's Together Through Life in all its rowdy glory."

By my count, this is the 54th album to released by Dylan and the fourth studio album in the last 12 years.  His latest release, the double c.d. Tell Tale Signs in 2008, was a collection of rare and unreleased gems dusted off from the vault over the last 20 years.  One particular song, entitled Red River Shore been played very heavily on my iPod since its release.  The song is an adaptation of the Kingston Trio's song of the same name but revamped with completely different lyrics. Dylan performs the song hauntingly and in it poignantly captures the wrenching human experience of lost love.  

Recently, a friend unfamiliar with the Bobster, asked me to recommend a Dylan album for him to listen to from beginning to end first.  "It depends on your mood," I said.  There are not just so many good ones, there are so many worthy ones, so many great ones.  If I tried to name a Dylan top ten album list in no particular order, I'm sure I would change my mind soon thereafter.  I'm going to try to anyway:  The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisted, Blonde on Blonde, Desire, Blood On the Tracks, Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, Love And Theft, and Modern Times.  

Dylan has to be the single greatest inspiration in my own poetry writing.  Now, that I am going through a heavy Saturn transit, I find myself returning to his music again and again.