Still Surviving

Our chicken, Survivor, is still doing a good job of her thing. Still supplying lots of eggs and even though goatless goes out to the pasture a lot to look for food.

The boys want goats again and so we might get them one each to raise and breed. A hobby, etc. It was nice to hear that they wanted this.

I let my oldest have a pellet gun. He's fifteen and many in the country already have access to a rifle or shotgun somehow. But I'm just now allowing a pellet gun. He likes it in the country for things like this, and chickens and goats, and I like it for them.

The deer have returned to my pasture now with the goats gone. It is a big herd now, or whatever deer groups are called. I think seven now. The fawns have all grown up. I didn't see any new fawns though. Don't know when they breed.

The hay I had for the goats has spread hay grass into my pasture. It may spread even further, I would think so. It's pretty, full and very green.

So, we're still here, alive and kicking. Our dog has the rule of the place too. Goes all over. I guess life is good.

Elvis and Lennon

Over the Christmas holidays and then most of this week I've read on a lot of subjects, but also a great deal on Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Saw documentary of them on TV too.

You don't think of Elvis as an intellectual. Even as an Elvis fan that seemed a rather bizarre thought to me at one time. I heard a few things to the contrary through the years, but mostly wanted to believe it, I didn't really buy it.

A very detailed biography of him though stated otherwise. Indeed he was.

I'd heard and believed how brilliant he was. You couldn't tell it by his stupid jokes, his dumber movies, or his absurd appearance. But the one about judging the book through its cover.

Sure enough, he was an average student at best in high school. Didn't go to college, even before he was ever king. He drove a truck. Read comic books by the hour. All goes with vintage thoughts of Elvis.

But about his brilliance. It wasn't just through music, but he was indeed a musical genius.

So many singers and songwriters did not take him seriously in the beginning. A goon, a flash in the pan.

Until they met him. He usually knew every song they ever wrote or sang or wished they had. He not only knew it by name, he knew every part of the song, the music, the lyrics, the history of it. He would walk up to people upon meeting them for the first time excitedly and sing their songs and tell them exactly why he loved it. He usually knew the song by heart the first time or two he heard it. In his first movie he came on the set having memorized every line in the movie, his and everyone elses.

But to the intellectual he was.

He read by the volume. Comic books appealed to him because he fantasized along with them the Captain Marvel he dreamed of being. It suited his fancy and his fantasies which he set about making real.

But he read very deep philosophical books also. Stacks of books against the wall and at his bedside. Usually religious in orientation.

He was brought up Southern fundamentalist, in particular Assembly of God. That fit actually. The most charismatic of the charismatic movements. He was very spiritual and sang that way. At least in the beginnig before he became formulaed.

When the dogmatic creeds didn't always fit, he searched for what would. He searched through such as Kalil Gibran and Aldous Huxley. He stayed close to his roots, but also tried to fill in the crevices.

When I hear the verse in the Bible about what gains a man to win the whole world but lose his soul, I think instantly and more than anyone, of Elvis Presley.

Elvis was lost and lonely and died that way. Having gained the whole world, the worldly part of it, and gotten almost everything he wanted, he lost it. Lost it inside. He knew it. He was trapped and did a lot of it to himself. Drugs addicted him to the loss. Whatever chance he had to get out of it.

I don't at all think that all the worldly things he did doomed him. I think that so much of it did. He lost sight, balance, but the pull was there and incredible. He knew something, but lost grip of it. He needed someone so badly to trust, but everytime he found someone trustworthy, he betrayed them. It was hard to read about him.

I read a book on the Beatles, but last night saw a documentary on them. Lennon also was deep though not formally educated. And he also read on much philosophy and religion.

It was his claiming the Beatles were more popular than Jesus that got him into trouble. He went on to say he didn't know which would die first, rock and roll or Christianity.

I was raised Southern fundamentalist and Assembly of God. Very very religious and sincere. I had just graduated from high school, just started college summer school and came home for summer break, went to the Assembly of God church back home and heard my preacher condemning the Beatles for the above statement. The church and my preacher didn't much like the Beatles anyway, I did, I adored them, especially John Lennon. But until that statement the church thought them pretty much harmless, as far as worldly things were considered anyway.

When I heard my preacher condemn them and repeat what had been said, I had to hold back a snicker. I was on the way, as many sophists going to college were, especially in the sixties, to becoming an agnostic. A skeptic. I thought, John Lennon had to have said what my preacher accused them of and admired Lennon for it. Agreed totally with it.

But when I sought out the circumstances I was even more bugged with my church and even more supportive of Lennon. Lennon meant no harm by it. I admired him for thinking he did mean harm. But the truth was he was reading on religion and Christianity and wanting answers. He found little wrong with Christ, but had a hard time with what Christianity had become. He had little respect anymore for the church and found it superstitious and antiquated as I had. But the fact was, he was making a comment on how it was declining and honest about it and witnessing how it was on the decline in substance and popularity and how rock and roll, especially now the Beatles, had become. It was a fact, not that he was for it, not that he wasn't, it was a fact. It reflected as much on people and Christians themselves as it did on him.

I agreed and still do on his observations.

Lennon was also my hero, though like Elvis, I found a lot about him I didn't care for and also had a sense of pity for him and often disgust, how trapped he was too. But I admired the way, overall, he struggled with it. To get his feet on the ground. He even, like Elvis, knew he was trapped and in many ways phony. But you have to struggle with it and he did. I don't know if he won, but I loved his struggle and in many ways did come to grips with it.

I have had my own struggles and many times and in many ways come full circle with Christianity and my church. But I feel more a seeker than a traditional Christian. I am Christian because of the many ways it has always provided me with substance. I still have problems with Christianity though and Christians for where I feel they are more smug being Christian than finding Christ. But mostly I want to understand. I've defended and ridiculed. I want to know the truth. I feel God expects it of me. But I know I haven't found it yet myself and I was never trapped by being an earthly icon. We all have our own traps. We all have our own searches.

And happy New Year, I guess.