Pink Cadillac

There's a strange psychic connection between Bobby Kennedy's voice and the sound of the Rolling Stones.
Hunter Thompson wrote that somewhere, I think. I don't know when or where, I just found a tattered piece of an envelope where I wrote that down and attributed it to Thompson.... It must have had some significance to me at the time, but for right now, I couldn't disagree more.
I'm coming out of three or four days of a feverish disgrace where I was barely functional, and my mind operated (operates, still) at unpredictable speeds.
I can't bear to have the thought of Bobby Kennedy or any other image of hope thrown at me right now, not so close to Inauguration Day, but then, I'm preparing for yet another growing season, and what inspires me and keeps me going other than that elusive and evasive little notion called hope?
That's where my problems start. Planning yet another growing season. And at one moment I have big plans, intending on taking the farm to bigger and better places, gargantuan places, even. Then I say, No. Slow down. I'm recovering from a rough few years. Take it slow. Stick with the basics. Practice fundamentals. Build up some momentum and them make a giant leap ....
I waver back and forth between these extremes, have been wavering back and forth since I got back from Texas, and then I find that annoying little quote somewhere in a closet where I thought I'd stashed a pair of clean socks. You see, I've noticed that the way I plan the farm is a direct reflection of the kind of music I'm listening to. I tried to humor myself that there was no correlation, but there seems to be no escaping it, now.
I go through catalogs, plot out the fields, make lists of building projects, make budgets for repairs, and, somewhere in this process I throw on some Goat's Head Soup just to stay awake. The next thing you know my plans are twice as elaborate as they've ever been, I'm planning on growing ten times as much as I ever had, and I've somehow convinced myself that there is indeed a market for rare types of Norwegian celery.
That gets old, or I stop to get something to eat, or whatever. By the time I sit back down, the tape is over and I'm listening to classical music on the public radio station from Johnson City. (I want you all to take a deep breath, and let that concept rest on your minds for just a moment. Classical music from Johnson City.) Alright. I'm glad we shared that. The garden becomes much more manageable. Everything seems practical. Do-able. It's well thought-out and organized. I haven't planned crop rotation based on the color wheel, or the alphabet. I'm planting in straight lines.
That's all well and good until the next time I sit down to do a little planning. Something a bit more raucous may be filling my eardrums, and I'm devising huge sculptures to erect over the fields that serve as an irrigation system, deer deterrent, windmill and Chinese tearoom. Then I switch to Norah Jones. Forget all that wild stuff. I'd really like to plant some cosmos along the driveway....
It calls into question that whole free will thing. Do I react to the circumstances around me, or do I create them?
Who the fuck is really doing the driving?
As Bruce said in his inspired intro to Pink Cadillac: Why does my mind lead me one way, but my flesh another?