Somewhere There’s Me
This life it seems, is all a dream
But here I am to dream it
Standing here in another year
When I say it, I mean it
I know there's a girl
Somewhere in the world
Who knows that somewhere there's me
When our paths become one,
We'll live in the sun
Together we'll set our son free
- refrain -
I've had many friends, I didn't know
And I'm sure they didn't know me
But there's strangers I've met, I'll never forget
Because we've always been close, you see
-1974, North Vancouver, B. C.
I wrote those lyrics when I was about seventeen years old in North Vancouver. I made up a Country Western song to go with those lyrics and sang it from Mexico to Squamish for anyone who would listen. When I passed through Texas and played it for my Grandmother, she said I would be on the radio one day.
Once, I was hitch-hiking in B. C., and got a ride with a family from Ontario. The man was about thirty and had an old Rambler Station Wagon full of his carpenter tools, a pretty raven-haired wife and a little boy just a few years shy of starting school. I told them I didn't have any money to chip in for their gas but that I'd sing them down the highway, if they wanted.
The driver agreed and his wife took their boy out of the back seat and snuggled him in up front. I piled in with my Yamaki and Somewhere There's Me was the first song I played for them. The woman clapped hands with her son and I could see the Papa smiling the most satisfied smile you ever saw. The little fellow asked his Dad if he could get a guitar someday.
I carried on with all the songs I knew and we sang together all the ones they knew. I remember that the man had the same big Scandinavian hands like my Grandfather. He only used one to steer with and it took up a large part the steering wheel. The other one was for smoking the Export 'A' cigarettes his wife rolled up for him from time to time from a big green tin.
I was sad to leave that family when they dropped me off at their highway exit. I felt like they had been a confirmation that my first song was real.
As I hauled my guitar out of the back seat the fellow turned to me and said, “Mike, that girl in your first song you sang, you'll find her. I know you will, just like I did.”
Well, it was a mighty long road to find her. Never knowing when, where or how we would meet, I saw two marriages evaporate, before we recognized each other. When first confronted with her, I was like a horse that is old enough to be saddled but young enough to buck. That is, I was skittish and my previous marriages had undermined my trust in women and severely eroded confidence in my own discernment. Though I never lost belief in my song, I doubted my own abilities in choosing a compatible mate.
Creator helped me see that everything that came before was necessary to put me in the right spot. I learned not to regret anything and the wisdom of patience. I was sent a powerful dream to give me courage. I dreamed of a water buffalo with a woman's voice from across the ocean. As it turned out, my mate was born across the ocean on the same day as me and had grown up riding water buffaloes. I tucked my shirt in and married her. Without her, you wouldn't be reading this now.
I had one son when I married her and the fine, honest man that he has become, shows a wisdom greater than my own guiding my path to and from his mother. I was blessed with another son and as I paced the grounds outside the hospital during his mother's long labour, I found a big dead raccoon. He had a beautiful coat, no signs of trauma and was just starting to freeze up in the Sagittarian wind.
Our new boy was born six weeks prematurely but was healthy and strong. We brought him home only three days later to our ground floor apartment in New Westminster. He weighed four pounds and we fed him from tiny bottles like they feed baby animals with on TV. That first night at home, a mother raccoon came with three cubs and stayed for two weeks in a bush underneath his bedroom window.
The first natural, outdoor sound he ever heard was the mama raccoon churring and fussing at her brood. The boy grew up left-handed and taught himself to play guitar right-handed. He started writing songs and playing for bigger and bigger audiences. He called himself Raccoon Eyes and became an accomplished guitar player. The Hand is always at work, everywhere. The illusion of time seems to exists only for us to spread our learning out, so we don't puff up like bullfrogs.
I saw a movie once about a cowboy and a lady. It’s screenplay was adapted from a book written by a Western genre author I have admired since my childhood. The woman portrayed in the film was a wife and a mother who found herself suddenly widowed and isolated on the American Frontier. She began unburdening her heart on leaves of paper. Because she lived in a remote area, she tied the letters to tumbleweeds for the wind to take. She wrote many such letters.
An old cowboy began finding her words way out in the windswept mountains where he worked herding cows and he came to know his mystery woman as intimately as any husband could possibly hope to. Fate caused their paths to cross several times before he discovered that she was the writer or she realized that he was the reader.
Being a quintessential cowboy, the man always stuck to his guns and always did the right things. The woman being a quintessential mother, kept her dignity and accepted her responsibilities. Each of their own chosen, individual codes kept them apart physically for a mighty long time. Those same codes eventually inspired Fate to weave them together under one happy blanket. Although these two characters are fictitious, the truths they tell and the roads they point out to us are very spiritually edifying.
We can all learn a lot even from an old Western movie. Anything shared with the world from your heart is a Tumbleweed Letter. Great Spirit reads them all. Anything not from your heart becomes a toy for Coyote to play with. All we men and ladies really have to do is ride our fences and weed our gardens. A couple of years ago, I started broadcasting my stories in a series called Bobcat Logic on Radio Lillooet. They are my Tumbleweed Letter and Grandmother, I dedicate them to you.
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