October 22, 2015. A Tinker's Cuss – New Jersey, October 2015
I am living in New Jersey and it is a very pleasant time of year with the leaves changing colours. The autumn colours of New Jersey are every bit as delightful as those in Central Otago. I love waking up to the sounds of V8 engines outside the window.
I've just spent five weeks travelling through Europe putting up poetry posters and mine is a privileged position for which I have a lot of gratitude. My life has never been easy but sometimes it has been very sweet.
I began putting up poetry posters wherever I could about six or seven years ago. The act of merely doing this expresses most everything that I believe about this life. When life has handed me a lemon I have always steered towards that which is beautiful.
Some people, places and things exist only to drag other people down. There is so much bitterness, violence, sarcasm and irony floating around the world these days. A bloke who has never worked in a manager's position knows how to manage everything better and so on. A guy screws a chicken, ends up in jail, and is never forgiven. People like to hold on to things like an old-timer at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting who is still talking about that slice of toast and butter he had on that bad night 35 years ago.
I believe people can change.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Paris and then flew into Philadelphia. I have to have a waiver of ineligibility to enter the USA. I tried for more than twenty years before I was granted one. I am not eligible because of a Heroin conviction from 1974.
At Customs in Philly the first officer looked at my computer profile and asked what the hell I had done, had I smoked something weird in the 1970s? I said no, worse than that. It was Heroin and Cocaine and I took it the man's way and I was a chemist burglar. He became a human soul and a kind and caring one. It's remarkable where you can meet these people.
The officer walked like John Wayne and was quite a cowboy. He told me he'd just worked security during the Pope's visit.
At Secondary, three officers sat at an elevated bench above me. I said that not even an 85-year-old big time Jewish lawyer with nose hairs from downtown Philadelphia could fix my Green Card situation and they howled with laughter. That's a damn good dose of humanity to be carrying on with.
The woman who interviewed me said her brother was currently going through a Heroin relapse. That touched me to the bottom of my soul.
Later, at Five Guys in Wayne, Pennsylvania, an old man of about 95 arrived in a Volvo station wagon with a fine old doggie. He wasn't an inch over five feet tall and almost completely doubled over. He hunched all the way out the door in small kind steps and slowly fed his dog peanuts. I need to see kindness to survive. I'm sure we all do.
I also visited a shoe store owned by two Italian brothers in their 60s. Their grandfather started the store in 1932. Their father was at Anzio beach in 1944. The brothers showed me two pairs of shoes their grandfather had made in the 1930s for a woman who died before she got to wear them.
The new album by Keith Richards is superb. He has become easily the bluesman his heroes were in their day.
I hope love and peace live within you.
Jim Wilson
