Shake Mr Scratch Off : My Gypsy Woman

Did I tell you about her in previous blogs? I met her at the gas pumps in Amarillo, Texas 1978. I was stunned by her beauty and have been looking for her since that day. She truly was one of those iconic gypsy women and obviously noticed that I was looking at her, as she filled the gas tank of her green gypsy van, that was pulling a trailer behind.
Even now, today, as I write this story, my blood pressure is rising… transporting me back to that moment, that sunny day, with light reflecting from every direction. I was petrified as I watched her disappear, into the store to pay up. I must have looked like Kaw-liga, in that song by Hank Williams…

Kaw-Liga, was a wooden Indian standing by the door
He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store
Kaw-Liga, just stood there and never let it show
So she could never answer yes or no

When she returned from the store she walked straight up to me. “Which way are you going” she asked. “East to Arkansas then North to Canada” My brain was about to explode with an aneurism.

“Could we travel that far together in case my van breaks down?” I do not remember my actual response… probably some shit stupid Hollywood rhetoric. At the outskirts of Little Rock Arkansas she pulled to the side of the road. Thinking she needed a rest, I pulled in behind her, got out to meet her coming toward me.

“I think my axel is broken. The engine is going but the van wont move.”
Everything I am telling you here is actual factual truth. In those days I was all fucked up about God and destiny so it was clear. God was working for me… it was meant to be.
It was Saturday. We found a tow truck. They came. She was driving. He was sitting in the passenger seat. They filled the cab… over flowing with their body fat. She squeezed out from behind the wheel. He did not move. She said, “I can take you van but, not your trailer.
Geri said, “Forget it”

She hooked up, trailer and all. Geri came with me, left her cats, Moon and Wind, in the van. We followed She and He back, back on ever narrowing roads with over hung, big leafy trees… getting shadier and shadier. We began to imagine scenarios like the movie Deliverance… arrows in our chest. We eventually pulled into an old broken down garage. She, He rolled out to be happily greeted by their two overly fleshy kids. They turned out to be the nicest people anyone could meet. He came to Geri and said, “Sorry Ma’am. I called around… can’t get you an axel til Monday but, I’ll get you back on the road first thing…stay right there in your van and friend can park behind you.

We hunkered down. Geri made tea and sweets, in her little van kitchen as her cats meowed around doing cat things. I could not stop “gazing” at her with predator thoughts, perhaps, too obvious about it. But she was gracious, in her well tanned skin, flowing black hair and gypsy dress. She told me her story… leaving Oregon, with all of her possessions to marry a man in Florida.

She suggested I could leave and she would be okay. “No, no… I’ll stick around until Monday… I can sleep in my car“. Aside from my predator instincts, it was the honourable thing to do…to not leave a woman stranded on a threatening back road in North Little Rock.
In those days it was easy, travelling in my little British made Austin-mini… I’d simply pull over beside the road and have a sleep. If the state patrol stopped by to check you out he would say, “take it easy, have a nice night” an he’d move on. These days… its, “What are you doing here“ he demands, as he rudely wakes me up with… “it is against the law to park on the interstate… where are you from, where’s your license” Basically it is “Get the fuck out of here or I will give you a ticket” This is an actual experience a couple of months back. “The times they are a changing” Bob Dylan.

It is interesting how…
the wheel goes around and around
and faster and faster…
more than once in one’s life time these days…
looping back to start again.
The same killin, the same bleedin, the same starving…
over again, over again, over again…
“when will we ever learn“.

Geri and I chatted on into the night and planned dinner out at the little cat fish diner back the road a ways aside the Mississippi. I was in heaven. I will die with that magnificence in my last breath. Years later, I met her again, a reincarnation in another gypsy woman… Arri Kanina … made an oil panting of her and then wrote a song.

.

No two are the same, even in reincarnation and that is the absolute, profound joy of womanhood. Each magnificent relationship enhances the succeeding one. In the creating of art and song they come together as another being, in the telling. Arri Kanina took me on another impressionable level like an etching on ones soul/genetic plate. In this painting, she shows her back, a metaphor for her private world, where one must not invade, without invitation. That is a woman’s nation and men acquire only privilege to go there, if she so chooses. Look into the painting and you will see other images emerging. These are my imaginings of her private life…my foggy reflections, projecting upon her, accepting her as she is or might be.

The song merges those two gypsies and my journeys with them.

.

In my travels today, secretly, I seek a second reincarnation of the gypsy woman. I carry two bicycles on the roof of my van… “… one for me and the other for that gypsy woman I will meet along the road” I reply to the curious and they just laugh at my fantasy… one they no doubt wish upon themselves…. to be standing on a theatrical stage with her by my side, sharing the story to the audience of our journey together. It will be fascinating… even to me

This…Shake The Devil Off Tour… has many facets and self fulfilling missions…fewer pejorative rants and to evolve myself to a higher state of wisdom on the human journey. I go off on many tangents, as the wind through my mind blows.

The real and pragmatic objective is to produce a book on these blog instalments and develop a theatrical stage performance to accompany that book. I actually did this in Halifax, September 2013. The craftsmanship was somewhat of a disaster but, it was a start… the start of this phase of the tour.

In this setting are three of my female sculptures, addressed in previous blog instalments. I titled the show THE METAPHORIC MAN... because that was where my transitioning was at that time... under the control of social indoctrinated constructs, which I have concluded are metaphors of an abdicated life, where all power is lost or conceded, at the point of the gun, to those who write the book of life to suit their vested interests, most, maybe entirely, material interests, over the higher yearnings of the humanity.