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Things To Consider in 2025

Going to the Good People

A few weeks before my grandfather Casey died, I visited him in the Alzheimer’s facility where he was housed. I hadn’t seen him in several months. My parents told me Casey wouldn’t recognize me, and that he only spoke gibberish now, if he spoke at all.

I found him sitting in a chair on a little patio outside his room. He lit up when he saw me and said, “Hey you.”

I said, “I’m Todd, your grandson.”

He said, “Is that so? How do you like that?”

I got another chair and sat beside him and after a bit of silent communion he said, “You know this is a very exclusive university. Very difficult to get in here.” Then he gave me a sly look. “But eventually everyone does.”

I told him a little bit about my life, and he told a long story that didn’t make any obvious sense to me, and then we sat in silence for a time.

When it was time for me to go, I took his hand and said, “I’m going now, Casey. I love you.”

He nodded thoughtfully and said, “Now listen. If you find yourself with the bad people, get away from them and go to the good people.”

Going Just A Little Way

When I was in college in Santa Cruz in the late 1960s, before mass murderers abounded and when there were almost no homeless people in America, if you can imagine such a world, I would hitchhike up the coast highway from Santa Cruz to San Gregorio, and then hitch over the coast range through La Honda and up to Skyline Boulevard and down into Woodside and home.

And I discovered that if I held a sign saying San Gregorio, I got rides much quicker than if I had no such sign.

When I dropped out of college and became a vagabond for a few years, I always presented to oncoming drivers a sign with the name of a town or city further along, and many of the drivers who did not stop for me would raise their hand and make the sign for “just a little way” – their index finger raised an inch or so above and parallel to their thumb.

And because much of the time I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just looking for a place to make camp and get some work and food, it occurred to me that rather than have a sign with the name of a big town or city fifty or a hundred miles down the road, if I chose smaller towns only ten or twenty miles further along, my odds of getting a ride might improve; and this proved to be true.

“Who do you know in (name of town),” the drivers would invariably ask when they stopped for me.

And I’d say, “Well I don’t know anyone there, but I’ve heard it’s a lovely place with friendly people, and I’m on a relaxed schedule these days so I thought I’d go take a look at (name of town).”

Sometimes I’d be informed that (name of town) was a snake pit or dead as a door nail or no place for a hippy, but more often than not the driver would tell me the best place to get a bite to eat in (name of town), or invite me to camp in his or her backyard, or even give me work or put me in touch with someone who needed a laborer.

One fellow in Maine picked me up, and after a mile or so accused me of duping him with my sign. I explained this was how I was exploring the world and if he felt duped he could let me off at the next viable place to hitchhike from. He immediately relented, we chatted some more, and he ended up buying me lunch and hiring me to clear brush on his property for a few days. I could have stayed with him for weeks more, he had endless work for me, but he suffered from logorrhoea and I fled to preserve my sanity.

One afternoon in Vermont, an elderly couple driving an old pickup stopped for me, and the man – he was riding shotgun – rolled down his window and said, “We are the only people who live in that town. Why do you want to go there?”

“To see the covered bridge,” I said, having a road map indicating such things.

He gave me a long look and said, “That bridge was torn down five years ago.”

“I need a newer map,” I said. I then explained my hitchhiking strategy and they listened as if I were revealing the meaning of life, after which the woman said, “If you don’t mind riding in back we’ll give you supper and you can camp in our meadow.”

Which I did.

*

Really Really You from Todd’s album Through the Fire

I’ve always liked lizards, feel lucky when I see one

I like pelicans, too. In fact, I’d like to be one.

I like hummingbirds, and I like chickadees, too

I like walking on the beach

And I really really like you

I like hanging out with little kids,

they hunger for the truth

I like spending time with teenagers,

they take me back to my youth

Yeah, they take me back to when I was seventeen

My life stretched out before me, no end to be seen

I love women, I do. I like men

I’m pretty much a Taoist, with a little touch of zen

I like your sister, she’s cool, and I like your brother, too

And I really really really really

really really really like you

I’ve always liked lizards, feel lucky when I see one

I like pelicans, too. In fact, I’d like to be one.

I like koala bears, and I like kangaroos

I like walking in the woods

And I really really like you

I love women, I do. I like men

I’m pretty much a Taoist, with a splash of cayenne

I like your sister, she’s jazz, and I like your brother, too

And I really really like you

I really really like you

fin

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Singing Along Again

Some of you let me know you enjoyed singing/reading along with my song The Way Things Go from my album Lounge Act In Heaven, and one of you asked for the lyrics to my song Really Really You from my album Through the Fire.

So here are links to Really Really You on YouTube, Pandora, Apple, and Amazon, and here are the lyrics to the song.

Really Really You

I’ve always liked lizards, feel lucky when I see one

I like pelicans, too. In fact, I’d like to be one.

I like hummingbirds, and I like chickadees, too

I like walking on the beach

And I really really like you

I like hanging out with little kids, they hunger for the truth

I like spending time with teenagers,

they take me back to my youth

Yeah, they take me back to when I was seventeen

My life stretched out before me, no end to be seen

Oooh chorus

I love women, I do. I like men

I’m pretty much a Taoist, with a little touch of zen

I like your sister, she’s cool, and I like your brother, too

And I really really really really really really really like you

I’ve always liked lizards, feel lucky when I see one

I like pelicans, too. In fact, I’d like to be one.

I like koala bears, and I like kangaroos

I like walking in the woods

And I really really like you

Ooh chorus

I love women, I do. I like men

I’m pretty much a Taoist, with a splash of cayenne

I like your sister, she’s jazz, and I like your brother, too

And I really really like you

I really really like you

Happy Solstice!

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Guitarist from New York

I went to bed last night thinking about fences and walls. We recently removed a large section of the old fence topped with barbed wire that surrounded our two acres when we bought the place. All our neighbors and visitors have told us how much they love the fence being gone, how beautiful the forest vista, and how spacious this whole part of the neighborhood feels now.

When I was growing up there were no fences or walls dividing the lots in our suburban neighborhood, which gave a marvelous spacious feeling to our environment. Everyone, adults and children and dogs, felt connected and could connect easily with each other. Fifty years gone by, high walls now surround all those lots, and the neighborhood feels like a vast prison.

I was going to write more about walls and fences, but the dream I had last night is much more interesting to me, and I thought you might find the dream interesting, too.

*

I’m walking on a dirt road on the coast of Spain in summer. I’m younger than I am now, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and I’m barefoot and have no possessions.

I come to a house on a hill with a view of the ocean. There are no other houses anywhere to be seen. In search of food, I enter the house and find three women there. I don’t know them and they don’t know me. Nevertheless, they accept me into their midst and one of them says of another of the women, “She’s a guitarist from New York.”

This woman, the guitarist from New York, has long brown hair and is very beautiful to me. She’s wearing a skimpy purple dress and invites me to embrace her. We embrace and kiss and disrobe, and she leads me away from the others and we make love.

The other women inform me they are a lesbian couple, and one of them says she’s never been with a man and would like to try. So she and I have sex, which upsets the guitarist from New York. She gives me a look to say From now on you will only have sex with me. Okay?

I give her a look to say Will do.

Now I’m doing some kind of work on the place and need a shovel. A moment later I’m in a big city in the 1930s in winter. There are electric trolleys and automobiles from that era, and the people are dressed in the fashions of those times.

I wander around until I find a hardware store. I choose a shiny new shovel and an axe, and on my way to the counter with them I remember I have no money. So I lean the shovel and axe against the counter and walk out of the store intending to go to my parents’ house in California to get some money.

I walk up a street where all the buildings collapsed long ago and trees and vines are now growing in the rubble. I come to a bus stop amidst the ruins and ask a man if buses still stop here. The man speaks English with a thick Spanish accent and says, “Yes. Buses still come here.”

A crowded bus arrives. I get on and say to the driver, “I don’t know how much it is. I want to go to the airport.” I get out my wallet and it is bulging with fifty and hundred-dollar bills. The driver gives me a ticket and two dollars.

I take a seat beside a woman wearing a heavy coat, her hair and face covered by a bandana. She removes her bandana and let’s her hair down. The guitarist from New York!

“Why do you need to fly to California?” she asks, pursing her lips for a kiss, “when your wallet is full of money?”

fin

Something piano solo from our new CD Through the Fire

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Reality

Our friend Jeff said to me the other day, “I don’t believe in reality.”

I wish I could remember what I said to him right before he said that, but I can’t.

The moment Jeff said, “I don’t believe in reality,” my awareness of reality shifted. Not that I stopped believing in reality, but I began to see the world differently. How so? Hard to say.

You will recall the scene in the prophetic movie The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman and the Lion are standing before the big screen on which is projected the frightening head and face of the supposed Wizard of Oz and they are quaking in fear of him and he is telling them he can’t help them, when Toto, Dorothy’s dog, possibly the sharpest member of the cast, discovers an old man standing in a booth adjacent to the screen, and the booth turns out to be the projection room, the image on the screen an illusion.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” says the Wizard of Oz on the screen as voiced by the old man in the projection room.

He might have said, “Don’t believe in reality! Believe instead in the nonsense on the screen intended to entrance you and entrap you and empower me at your expense.”

*

Yesterday I was on my way into Corners of the Mouth, the worker-owned food cooperative in Mendocino where I shop twice a week, and there were two people, a man and a woman, standing in front of the store gazing into their smart phones. The man said, “Mixed reviews.” The woman replied, “Seems more like a bulk foods place.”

As I passed them I said, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

“Excuse me?” said the man, frowning at me.

“It’s a great store. Full of wonders,” I said, smiling at him. “I’ve been shopping here multiple times a week for seventeen years. Every time I go in I discover something new. The produce is grandiloquent, the employees spectacular, their selection of chocolate bars inspiring.”

The man looked at his phone. “Says the layout is confusing.”

The woman blinked at me and said, “That was from The Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

“Right you are,” I said, entering the store and inhaling of the magnificence.

Which is to say, reality seems to be largely what we make of things. Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.” To which I will add, “If you think what is projected on your screen is reality, so it shall be.”

*

My mother was essentially mistrustful of reality whenever things were going well. In other words, she was always expecting something bad to happen. It was almost as if she wanted something bad to happen. I don’t think she did, but her expectation was so strong it might as well have been the desire for disaster.

I inherited this mistrust of happiness from her, which created in me a lifelong propensity for self-sabotage. I am ever amazed at how this manifests on both the physical and emotional planes in my life, and I’m not kidding when I say I really don’t know how I made it to seventy-three.

*

My mother said the thing she disliked most about getting old was all her friends were dying. She did not say that what she disliked most about getting old was all her friends were falling and breaking various bones and hitting their heads, but for me that seems to be the era we have entered vis-à-vis our friends, along with some of them dying, too.

As one who has fallen many times throughout my life, though not recently knock-on-wood, I can tell you that in my reality every time I fell I was either needlessly hurrying or not paying close attention to what I was doing, and probably both those things. My most recent injury resulting from needlessly hurrying and not paying attention was to smash my bare toes on a rock protruding from the path I was on, the result of which was a broken toe, an infected toe, a wonky way of walking for some weeks, aches and pains from lopsided posture due to compensating for foot pain, and so forth ongoing.

Why was I hurrying and not paying attention after a delightful barefooted walk on the beach? The short answer is: I’m an idiot.

*

Why do we needlessly hurry and not pay attention to what we are doing? We might say the answer is different for each of us. We might also say the answer is the same for all of us. For one reason or another we are not content to fully inhabit the present moment. We are entrained to move forward, to keep going, to stay busy, to keep ourselves entertained, our brains stimulated, even if by junk. We don’t know very well how to saunter and to pay close attention to what we’re doing and to what’s going on around us.

Marcia and I take a walk on the headlands south of Mendocino every few weeks, and after a two-mile jaunt we come to the end of the trail overlooking a rock outcropping just offshore on which harbor seals like to roost for several hours a day. Sometimes there are a dozen or more seals on those rocks, sometimes just a few, and sometimes there are none. The seals are light gray and dark gray and various shades of brown, their colors very close to the colors of the outcropping.

Now here’s an interesting thing to me about this outcropping and those seals. We have arrived at the point overlooking the outcropping a hundred or so times in my life, and the first thing I do when we arrive there is to count the seals. And many of those times, my first count misses at least one and sometimes more of the seals. My second count usually includes all the seals, but sometimes it takes a third careful scanning before I clearly see all the seals.

fin

Conception Vessel Seventeen piano/cello duet from Through the Fire

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Who Knew?

When I was a little boy and I would tell my grandfather Casey something I thought was terribly important or interesting, he would feign amazement and say, “Who knew?”

The first few times he responded in this way I replied, “I did.” Eventually I came to realize Who knew? was his way of saying, “Oh my gosh,” or “Isn’t that something,” or “How unexpected.”

By the time I was a teenager, I knew that many Jewish people used the expression, and to this day when I encounter someone who comes out with Who knew? (usually with a tone of humorous irony) I feel an immediate affinity.

What does this have to do with our new CD Through the Fire? Well… when we were making the album we had about forty-five minutes of music to present. A standard CD holds about seventy-two minutes of content and we thought it would be fun to fill some of the remaining space with a story or two of mine, one of the Healing stories and…

“Oh please read Of Onyx and Guinea Pigs,” said Marcia, emphatically. “It’s both believable and beyond believable, and it’s so funny.”

So I recorded the memoir in Peter Temple’s studio where we’ve made all our albums and where I’ve recorded all my audio books, and Peter thought the story was fiction, which it is not, though it certainly could be.

Now that Through the Fire is out in the world and we’ve gotten responses from friends and DJs, Of Onyx and Guinea Pigs is by far the most talked about track on the album.

My response is “Who knew?” And the answer is, Marcia did.

*

a link to a site with all the downloading/streaming/listening options for Through the Fire

https://throughthefiretoddwalton.hearnow.com/

and a link to where one can buy the actual CD of Through the Fire 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRSNHR6H/ref=dm_rwp_pur_lnd_albm_unrg

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Through the Fire!

Dear Readers (and Listeners)

Through the Fire, our new album (CD), has just arrived! Nine gorgeous musical numbers featuring Todd playing piano and Marcia playing cello, with Todd singing on a few tunes, along with Todd reading two funny stories. Here is the mother of all links to facilitate your sampling, downloading, streaming, and getting some or all of our new audio sensation. We hope you’ll share this link with your music and story-loving pals and post the news hither and yon.

You can buy the actual gorgeous CDs from Amazon as well as from your favorite source (s) for actual CDs.

Actual CD getting link.

As we carry on from one power outage to the next here in Mendocino, we’re wishing you a Happy New Year!

Todd & Marcia