Chinaman's Chance
Bob Dylan on how he chose his career:
"Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?"
.
.
- Tomorrow morning there'll be laundry, but he'll be somewhere else to hear the call, don't say goodbye, he's just leaving early; he's walking Spanish down the hall... At the risk of breaking some months of silence to merely complain, I will say I am mighty tired. Late night florescent lights down too many apartment-hotel-dormitory hallways, bland kitchen furniture, manicured lawn upon manicured lawn. Wholesome smiling young people in glasses jogging in the morning while the sky spits October and the wind picks up, and still the vine maples haven't gone red. October, the month of remembering, for me, now, in the place of not-remembering. I don't want to remember things back East, or when I was a kid or any of it. Got to move forward, Go West, Young Man, so I said, and thumped the ground when I said it, 'cause I'm through with the East and through with the dying sycamores and the creeping ICC killing all my childhood, all my remembering places. So now I'm here in this dorm full of freshmen, in a city that'll buy my art, with the rain still wet in my hair writing this sloppy complaint of memory because I wanted to write, and didn't think about what. Rain's picking up outside, not quite the smell of October, like the frogs down in the valley aren't quite like the sound of the frogs in the Maryland fall. Ripened corn and flapping black crows and the morning mist and mud, wet grass and the odor of tempera paint, wood frogs and peepers going off in the background.
I've been on the road so long now- I know it's not long by any real drifter's account, but I'm a dilettante in these things as in all- and I just want to go home. Just want to come in from the rain, up the walk to the door that I don't need a key to open. Just want someone there who wants to see me, a woman who'll let me cook a meal for her, who'll cool my brow, and for whom I don't need to remember anyone.
I'm tired of grubby nights on grubby couches in houses full of people who play guitar. I've got a room here, and a couple of things to hang on the wall, a place to paint and sculpt, but I'm still on the road. Hard habit of mind to break. Too many grey nights, too many boot-heel days.
In a week I leave for the Oregon coast, with no particular plan, a tent, and enough food and water to last me a while. Maybe I'll hitch, maybe I'll have company, most likely I'll solo my way south to gods know where, maybe I'll even come back to Portland. The sea is calling to me again; I proofed my room against ghosts well and thoroughly (no mean feat on this haunted campus) with sagebrush and crow feathers, but it takes much more than hedge-medicine to hold off the sea. Maybe I'll find something I need- at least it'll be good for an adventure. Whatever we lose, like a you or a me, and all that.
Funny way to live a life. Can't run but I can walk much faster than this...
.
.
.
"Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far a-way from home, so far away from home
.
And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it's alright, it's alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong
.
And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying
.
We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune
Oh, but it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's gonna' be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest." - Paul Simon
.
.
.
"Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?"
.
.
- Tomorrow morning there'll be laundry, but he'll be somewhere else to hear the call, don't say goodbye, he's just leaving early; he's walking Spanish down the hall... At the risk of breaking some months of silence to merely complain, I will say I am mighty tired. Late night florescent lights down too many apartment-hotel-dormitory hallways, bland kitchen furniture, manicured lawn upon manicured lawn. Wholesome smiling young people in glasses jogging in the morning while the sky spits October and the wind picks up, and still the vine maples haven't gone red. October, the month of remembering, for me, now, in the place of not-remembering. I don't want to remember things back East, or when I was a kid or any of it. Got to move forward, Go West, Young Man, so I said, and thumped the ground when I said it, 'cause I'm through with the East and through with the dying sycamores and the creeping ICC killing all my childhood, all my remembering places. So now I'm here in this dorm full of freshmen, in a city that'll buy my art, with the rain still wet in my hair writing this sloppy complaint of memory because I wanted to write, and didn't think about what. Rain's picking up outside, not quite the smell of October, like the frogs down in the valley aren't quite like the sound of the frogs in the Maryland fall. Ripened corn and flapping black crows and the morning mist and mud, wet grass and the odor of tempera paint, wood frogs and peepers going off in the background.
I've been on the road so long now- I know it's not long by any real drifter's account, but I'm a dilettante in these things as in all- and I just want to go home. Just want to come in from the rain, up the walk to the door that I don't need a key to open. Just want someone there who wants to see me, a woman who'll let me cook a meal for her, who'll cool my brow, and for whom I don't need to remember anyone.
I'm tired of grubby nights on grubby couches in houses full of people who play guitar. I've got a room here, and a couple of things to hang on the wall, a place to paint and sculpt, but I'm still on the road. Hard habit of mind to break. Too many grey nights, too many boot-heel days.
In a week I leave for the Oregon coast, with no particular plan, a tent, and enough food and water to last me a while. Maybe I'll hitch, maybe I'll have company, most likely I'll solo my way south to gods know where, maybe I'll even come back to Portland. The sea is calling to me again; I proofed my room against ghosts well and thoroughly (no mean feat on this haunted campus) with sagebrush and crow feathers, but it takes much more than hedge-medicine to hold off the sea. Maybe I'll find something I need- at least it'll be good for an adventure. Whatever we lose, like a you or a me, and all that.
Funny way to live a life. Can't run but I can walk much faster than this...
.
.
.
"Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far a-way from home, so far away from home
.
And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it's alright, it's alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong
.
And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying
.
We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune
Oh, but it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's gonna' be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest." - Paul Simon
.
.
.