Shelter from the Storm

Or meanwhile back at Mister Thomas Wolfe and You Can’t Go Home Again....

 OK the carnival wasn’t my home. Rather, it was my home but for just three short years. I came off the road for a lot of reasons. NOT just because a certain jerkwad was threatening me with a gun and not because I got sick of the rest of the cretinous, lowlife, grifter, skankbrained, full of themselves folk either.

I had this dream, see, of a calm, stable, fun-without-the-crazy home. A sanctuary that didn’t pick up and move every few days. I dreamed of having friends who wouldn’t give me a raft of shit for using words of more than one syllable in any given sentence. I imagined being surrounded by fellow artists, writers, readers and musicians. And indoor plumbing (duh!).

I found all that.

While chatting with a couple of jointees at the little carnival happening up the street this weekend, I remembered another bit that I was keen to escape.

Carnies aren’t the happiest people -- not by a long shot. Many (most?) are on the lam from one thing or another -- the law, a bad relationship, terminal ennui, themselves. They’re not at peace within their own respective skins.

Happiness is within us. It’s not a destination ('I’d finally be happy if I moved to San Francisco/NYC/Berlin') or a commodity you pick up at some darling little curio shop while you’re playing a spot in New Mexico. or Southern Illinois.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

― Abraham Lincoln

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

― Mahatma Gandhi

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

― Mark Twain

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

― Helen Keller

One running joke, usually said on slow, low mark nights ‘I want to run away from the carnival and join a home!’

I did.

“Child, child, have patience and belief, for life is many days, and each present hour will pass away. Son, son, you have been mad and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all the dark confusions of the soul - but so have we. ”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

Bob Dylan -- Shelter from the Storm