Okieinexile's Blog

By Bobby Neal Winters

As I write this, yesterday was Wednesday.  As has become my habit, I took a walk after my last class was finished at 5pm. Usually, this is a walk to the grocery store to get a finishing touch for dinner or to get something for lunch the next day.  Because this is my last week and I am finishing up, I want to minimize the amount of food that I have to leave here for other people to deal with, so I just took a walk.

I made my way up to the Biggee Store on Pacheco, bought a bottle of pop because this is what one does at the end of a long day, and then began my way back along a different path.

I am alone here.

All alone.

At the end of the day there is the ritual walk, from which I return.  Then I need to fill some time before I start cooking dinner.  I do some scholarly work, but after that I’ve set aside some time to learn to play the recorder.  

Those of you who follow this space know that I’ve been trying to learn how to make recorders on my wood lathe.  I’ve been successful to the extent that I’ve made something that I can blow on one end and have a sound come out the other.  That is some measure of success, but the question is: Is it the right sound?

So I packed up a store-bought plastic recorder and a book that is meant for children, and I brought it to Paraguay with me.  I’ve been giving it an hour at the end of the day everyday.  Most of what I am practicing are just technical exercises:  How to place my fingers for a note; how to transition from one note to another; how long to hold the notes.

If you are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you must become as a little child.

Every so often, the book works in a fragment of a song.  If it is a song I know, playing it does one of two things: It reinforces that I have made progress because I recognize it or it alerts me to the fact that I am missing something because I don’t. 

One of my favorites might be familiar to you:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger //

Traveling through this world of woe //

But there’s no sickness, toil or danger //

In that great world to which I go

I was walking back from the Biggee Store, on a path that I had not walked recently and had never walked at that time of daw, when this song came into my head.

To get the feeling of this, I think I should tell you a couple of things.  After five is a rush hour here.  The street that I had taken up to the Biggee Store was Legion Civil Extranjero and it is a zoo that time of day.  I was walking down a street designed to be residential and to make the concept of residential stick.  

The street is rough, but the sidewalks are very nice. I had it entirely to myself.  That time of the day, this time of the year, the sun is getting low in the west but has not set. The level of light brought to mind C.S. Lewis’s description of the “grey town” in his book “The Great Divorce.”

The last time I was here Kris Kristofferson died and I was reminded, “There’s nothing short of dyin’/ half as lonely as the sound / of a sleeping city sidewalk / Sunday morning coming down.”

That has spoken to me from time to time. Now I would say, “Hey, Kris, hold that thought.”

I made my way back to the room, and that evening when I practiced the recorder, I poured that feeling into it:

I’m going there to see my Father /

I’m going there no more to roam /

I’m only goin’ over Jordan /

I’m only goin’ over home