Here’s an excerpt from Jim Leftwich’s autbiographical afterword to his latest book, PIT SWAN & ORBATE WRITING
Remember What You Can
Jim Leftwich
In the fourth grade I was given an aptitude test which determined (among many other things, I would assume) that I had absolutely no aptitude for music. That’s the only thing I remember being told about the test. That would have been 1966 or 67. It was beginning in those days to sound — and look — like music might be a significant alternative to the war in Vietnam. The counterculture was saying no to the draft, and rock n roll music was spreading that message to all corners of the country. Music was beginning to tell young males like myself that another world was possible. It wasn’t the job of a fourth grade teacher in Amherst County, Virginia to encourage that way of thinking.
I went away to college, dropped out after four years, and went off rambling around the country. Every now and then I would drop in on my parents. My mother would be at the dining room table, listening to the radio. We would drink a few beers, tell each other some stories. She said, you are volatile, do you know that? I said no, not really. Yeah, sure. I guess I know. Maybe it was only a matter of the multitudes of selves. Some of which were surprises. She said, Please Come to Boston, do you know that song? It reminds me of you. I said, I don’t know. Maybe. It was the seventies. In matters both personal and political, I had no idea of what was coming. She said, Against the Wind, too, reminds me of you. I said, well. Ok. If you think so.
The eighties was a poisonous decade, acid rain falling on a nuclear time bomb, death squads funded by designer drugs. Killing us again and again. Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends.
It’s New Year’s Eve now, 2024. Sue and I are camped beside the Colorado River, on the Arizona / California border. I’m not sure I would have made it through the eighties if Sue and I hadn’t met.
There isn’t much wind here, just enough for us to notice it, barely moving through the mesquite trees. There is always everything to be new, and nothing to ever be anywhere other than the present.
I’m a little worried about the coming year. I’ve been worried about the coming year for as long as I can remember.
