THE YEAR GOES
HOME, II
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Christmas Eve 2001: Photo by Edward McKuen.
©2001 Stanyan Entertainment Group
A Thought for Today
Lack of love and loving spoils the purest
heart.
On Fridays I usually pass
along weird or funny items and jokes that friends have sent in an attempt
to clear out their e-mail boxes. Not so today. All of the following
reports have appeared in editions of the New York and Los Angeles Times
and the CNN ‘crawl’ over the past several days.
AND IN OTHER NEWS
An
Australian doctor and as many as fifteen mid-wives are being investigated
for having ‘laughing gas’ parties in a maternity ward during deliveries.
-O-
Julia Phillips, producer of such films as “The Sting,” “Close Encounters
of the Third Kind” and “Taxi Driver” has died after a long illness.
Phillips burned many bridges by offending David Geffen, Goldie Hawn,
Warren Beatty and dozens of other Hollywood luminaries in her tell all
memoir “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.” A producer once termed
the book, “The longest suicide note in history.”
-O-
19-year-old Christopher Portman his been sworn in as the mayor of Mercer,
Pennsylvania. His girl friend and would be First Lady is the head
cheerleader at a local school.
-O-
Jay Leno has termed the man caught on an American Airlines flight with
explosives in his sneakers “The Shoe-icide Bomber.” He claims the
authorities are investigating the possibility of an accomplice because
they “usually travel in pairs.”
-O-
Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone calls “Black Hawk Down” “One of the
best movies of the year.”
-O-
More on the Shoe Front: A university honors student who allegedly had a
knife in his running shoe and tried to pass through Logan International
Airport security in Boston was arrested and charged with disorderly
conduct.
-O-
In Southern France a bar patron has taken advantage of the confusion over
the introduction of the new Euro dollar by paying his tab in Monopoly
money.
-O-
Cambodia’s prime Minister has announced that unless his nation’s
entrepreneurs voluntarily close all Karaoke Bars and Disco’s he will bring
in tanks and do the job for them.
-O-
A National Guardsman, Louis H. Alverez, accidentally shot himself as San
Francisco airport while trying to remove his gun from its holster. The
shot went through his hip and exited at his buttocks.
-O-
Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone calls ”Ali “ one of the best movies of
the year.”
-O-
The military has announced that Norwegian peacekeepers serving in the
Kosovo province of Yugoslavia found a suspicious letter containing white
powder during a routine patrol “It’s probably only coke,” said one
official. Nevertheless four peacekeepers and their interpreters are all
receiving antibiotics and being monitored for possible anthrax exposure.
-O-
A man has been charged with stealing guns and “tools” from actress Kim
Novak’s residence in Oregon.
-O-
It snowed in Atlanta.
-O-
The mayor of Rio wants to bring criminal charges against weatherman who
predicted rain over the New Year weekend because it failed to materialize.
-O-
Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone calls “The Royal Tenenbaums” “one of
the best movies of the year.”
-O-
Argentina’s 5th president in two weeks has received a congratulatory
letter from President Bush. Do you recon it was a carbon or Xerox copy?
-O-
But will it travel? The animated film “Sen to Chiharo no Kamikakushi” has
broken all records at Japanese cinemas. The plot? A 10-year-old girl is
trapped in a bathhouse with Japanese gods and spirits.
-O-
California Lottery continued to sell “worthless” scratcher tickets long
after they become aware that all the major prizes had been won. One GOP
foe of Governor Davis has requested that the state sponsor a free
million-dollar drawing as a payback to unsuspecting participants. A
lottery official is quoted as agreeing, “We could say.” Gee there was a
problem and this is our way of rectifying it.”
-O-
Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone calls “No Man’s Land” “Superb, fierce
and funny.” But was it one of the year’s best, Pete?
-O-
A Maryland prosecutor claims an actor featured in a movie about Taliban
oppression, “”Kandahar,” is David Belfield, the long-sought fugitive in
the political assassination of an Iranian exile leader in Bethesda in
1980.
-O-
What did you expect, “fair and balanced?” Fox News couldn’t wait to
smarmily report the death of President Clinton’s dog Buddy with phrases
like “He was a good dog.” “Buddy is in a better place now.” Who writes
this stuff, Bill O’Reilly?
AND FINALLY
Bet you’ll be seeing this on
60 Minutes.
An
innocent man who spent 31 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit
was released when it was determined that FBI officials knew all along that
he was innocent but kept quiet so it wouldn’t compromise one of their paid
informants. The informant, a Mafia member, is now wanted for 19 murders
allegedly including two of his girlfriends. “But I was promised immunity,”
complained the informant,” Stephan (The Rifleman) Flemmi. Federal Judge
Mark Wolf ruled that “No on in law enforcement has the power to sanction
murder.”
The New England F. B. I,’s long-running abuse of power is “the greatest
failing in law enforcement history” says James Wilson, chief council to
the House Government Reform Committee. Authorities have charged Flemmi’s
F.B.I handler John Connolly of tipping off Flemmi and his mobster boss, as
the police were about to arrest them.
New York Times Columnist William Safire who has helped make this a major
news story ended a recent column on the affair this way: “It’s another
mistake that will come back to haunt the Bush presidency. Call me
Cassandra, but history will not look kindly on those who let ends justify
means – and let helpful hoodlums get away with murder.”
THE 12 DOWNLOADS OF CHRISTMAS #10
“AND TO EACH SEASON”
ABOUT THE SONG
“And to Each Season” is
featured in one form or another in six of my albums, not including
anthologies and ‘Greatest Hits’ collections: Odyssey; New Carols for
Christmas; Pastures Green and the concert LP’s Evening in Vienna; The
Amsterdam Concert and Grand Tour. It is one of my most requested songs at
shows and concerts and has been a modest hit for me on several continents.
The song “And to Each Season”, written as a reaction to my mother’s death,
bears the same title as my 1972 book which deals with the same subject at
greater length. When I had nearly completed the song I realized it worked
as a fugue against Johann Pachelbel’s famous Canon in G.
This track is an alternate version of an arrangement for voice and chamber
orchestra by Reg Guest – I beefed it up a bit here to accommodate the full
National Philharmonic Orchestra. It has only appeared on the LP “Pastures
Green” (Stanyan Records #9047) in 1973. It was recorded in June 1971 at
Philips studios in London.
THE WORDS
And To Each Season
And to each season something is special
Lilac, red rose or the white willow.
Young men of fortune old men forgotten
Green buds renewing the brown leaves dead and gone.
Spring and the lilac pale white and lavender
Fill up the rooms of my gone mother.
And when the cat springs on to the window ledge
His only greeting is the silence of the rain.
And to each season something is special
Lilac, red rose or the white willow.
Young men of fortune old men forgotten
Green buds renewing the brown leaves dead and gone.
Deep down in autumn all of the brown leaves
Fall on the garden and cover up the lawn.
Let us remember each year in turn then
When there was sun enough to cover up the wrong.
And to each season something is special
Lilac, red rose or the white willow.
Young men of fortune old men forgotten
Green buds renewing the brown leaves dead and gone.
Roses in summer climb up the stone wall
Playing with sunlight and the morning shadows.
Petals as firm as the young men’s striding
Pants full of love, hearts filled with longing.
And to each season something is special
Lilac, red rose or the white willow.
Young men of fortune, old men forgotten
Green buds renewing the brown leaves dead and gone.
Welcome the winter robed in it’s whiteness
Bending down the willow with its snow blankets.
And the wild berries hidden in the wood now
From all the creatures lost in the darkness.
And to each season something is special
Lilac, red rose and the white willow.
Young men of fortune old men forgotten
Green buds renewing the brown leaves dead and gone.
Love was the legacy left by my mother
Living and dying according to the season.
And were she here now she’d give her blessing
To yet another time of my love seeking.
And to each season something is special
Lilac, red rose or the white willow.
Old men of fortune leave to me something
For I’ve no family now but that of man.
Tell all the young men passing in the lanes now
Soon I’ll be coming down to take my place with them.
For to each season something is special
Lilac, red rose or the white willow.
Words and music by Rod
McKuen © by Rod McKuen and Stanyan Music
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD
AND TO EACH SEASON
(For PC users a simple
left-click on the above link should start the download automatically. If
you're having problems, try right-clicking on the link and select "save
target as....". Mac users should click and hold for menu options, then
select the save option. A Mac alternative is to hold down the option
button and click the link to download and save.)
I’ll be back tomorrow with something for Saturday and another download.
Sleep warm.
RM 01/03/2002 Previously
unpublished
Rod McKuen live in New York!
Click here for details.
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A
cat is confidence with a tail.
Invention is powerful. Reinvention, genius.
Knowledge is akin to loving. The closer to
reality you come, the deeper the mystery.
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WHEN I WAS NINE |
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1.
When I was nine
or part of nine
we lived in Scamania, Washington.
Our cabin sat beside the highway
so near that we could hear
cars whiz past us
and trucks grunt up the incline
late at night.
Behind the house for miles
grew every kind of tree.
My private forest
that another boy
never once walked through.
I’d be sent for firewood
and first come home with flowers
hoping I could please my mother
half as much as I believed
my foster father could.
Never knowing
and not
to know
if wild bouquets made her as happy
as red roses later did.
Because my new found forest
was my own and my own only,
gradually I came to read it
like a scholar poring over books,
muttering to himself at certain passages.
I muttered back at squirrels
and held long dialogues with birds,
fully sure I spoke their language.
Positive their answers
came in kind.
None ever contradicted me.
2.
It must have been
toward the first of spring
when I first saw him
a mountain lion sleek and soft
pretty as Rousseau might make him,
threading through the wood
padding slow
before he saw me
then stopping as I had
to look me up and down.
Perhaps it was the first time
I had been surveyed
by microscope or microscopic eye.
All that afternoon
we sat not twenty feet apart,
regarding one the other
till he loped off
in search of weasels
or a place of water.
I stayed there still
until the darkness
took the afternoon.
Then I went home,
never speaking of the incident
till now.
Thereafter
by unspoken pre-arrangement
he would follow me
from house to school
and again from school to house,
remaining always
just outside the clearing,
invisible to anyone but me.
The distance narrowing,
yet still he prowled his private path
and I the man-made trail
where few branches
gave obstruction
and only now and then
a leaf would rustle
or a twig would snap.
I grew to know
the sorrow in his eyes
though never why;
but afterward I sought
the same, soft sadness
in the eyes of strangers
I would have for friends.
Perhaps that is why
my understanding friends are few
they lack a certain sadness
that betrays the truth.
3.
In mid-October
the first long rain began
and pings of water
speeding down to pots
from the leaking roof
had turned from pings
to plops.
The mud-caulked cabin
We had found abandoned
and turned into our summer home
would surely fall that winter,
maybe even with the season’s
first hard thirst.
And so we left
even as it rained
determined to be gone
before the snow could catch us.
The model-T had long ago
been traded off
to pay the grocery bill
so now we hitched to California.
My mother with her thumb up
and her pretty smile
got us back down crooked roads
through Washington and Oregon,
along the California coast
and finally to Nevada.
We must have been a spectacle.
She out front
as slim as summer,
her husband with my brother
in his arms beside her
and me still looking off behind
hoping I might see
a lion’s friendly face.
A sad-eyed lion
pacing out an even pace
keeping his distance
but being there
in case that one the other
needed one the other.
4.
I wonder if I ever told her
or if my mother ever knew
the first companion
I called friend
was an animal of gentleness
whose eyes I’ll long remember.
Did she know that I had
special dispensation
and protection?
Or why a lion, not a lamb?
When my family
out of kindness
kidnapped me
and stole me
from my forest friend
they stole my childhood too.
Though I would still climb trees
and later fell them
as a stopgap on my way to now,
and seek out jungle animals
(and maybe even find a few)
it wouldn’t be the same again.
5.
A mountain lion in a forest
is by all accounts
a curious event,
but he was there.
And written here
between these lines
is what gentleness
he taught me
and some hardness too,
the way to make my way alone,
though never how to find a friend
and lose him gracefully.
Most of all my lion showed me
that though the forest’s
padded green
is a different color
from the green of its thick trees
man and lion
different colors too
can share the same dense jungle
if their eyes have kinship
and they respect the distance
that brings them close.
And the closeness
that insists on distance.
Since that time
when I was nine
or part of nine,
looking after lions
has occupied
the front part of my head
and the best part of my time.
No journey’s been too far too make
if I thought lions lived there.
And I always look
from
right to left
every time I’m passing
down a new road
anywhere.
But forests
now fall down around us
the way that autumn rain did
when I was nine in Washington.
And I suppose
what lions there are left
hike the higher hills.
It must be so
for those that prowl
the city pavements
come so seldom anymore
that they can walk
among the populace unnoticed.
-from “And to Each Season,” 1972 |
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