Wharf Rat

I've been listening to the Grateful Dead alot lately, on Sirius satellite (via the tv/Dish network), Pandora.com, and Grooveshark.com.

Wharf Rat is so sad. It evokes one of the last books I've read, Nausea, by Sartre, I think, in that things can be so dismal.

Here's the lyrics:

Old man down, way down down, down by the docks of the city.Blind and dirty, asked me for a dime, a dime for a cup of coffee.I got no dime but I got some time to hear his story.My name is August West, and I love my Pearly Baker best more than my wine.More than my wine - more than my maker, though he's no friend of mine.Everyone said, I'd come to no good, I knew I would Pearly, believe them.Half of my life, I spent doin' time for some other fucker's crime,The other half found me stumbling 'round drunk on Burgundy wine.But I'll get back on my feet again someday,The good Lord willin', if He says I may.I know that the life i'm livin's no good,I'll get a new start, live the life I should.I'll get up and fly away, I'll get up and fly away, fly away.Pearly's been true, true to me, true to my dyin' day he said,I said to him, I said to him, "I'm sure she's been."I said to him, "I'm sure she's been tru to you."Got up and wandered, wandered downtown, nowhere to go but just hang around.I've got a girl, named Bonnie Lee, I know that girl's been true to me.I know she's been, I'm sure she's been true to me.

I read that the Wharf Rats is a group of Deadheads who set up tables at every concert for drug and alcohol addicts and those in need of support.

I thought I'd include it in my blog because I went fishing with my grandfather, Mr. T, when I was a boy, at Fisherman's wharf, in San Francisco. 'Teshara' anagrams to 'he's a rat'. He's Dead (but is he Grateful? -that's the question. He's the same guy that put me toward the Dead Milkmen). Anyway, I caught a female flatfish, that was giving birth to baby fish on the line. Kind of trippy, if you're looking for meaning, I guess. Plus, re: "he's no friend of mine" (I don't know my birthfather, my "maker", never met him).

Anyway, I've got my headphones on, and I'm listening to the song as I write this right now.
Worf, stardate captain's log, out. There's some Data.

Ugh. Half one's life unjustly prisoned, half one's life drunk, a pessimistic outlook, abject poverty, and the truth of human nature, in all it's ugliness, that leads to people using each other as cheap sex objects, leaving people wondering if their partner has been true to them, with the sadness of denial and maybe the shattering of the only thing holding a sad life together.

I have to update this post: The Dead are fairly trippy to me, and I'm not even on drugs (well, I mean the illegal kind); Maybe it's because jews, I think, occasionally write out God as G-D (I saw that at the Hillel center at UCD, next door to where I lived). I was born in '71 to a hippy, so I suppose it's in my blood. G-D, well I declare. Anyway, besides wharf rat, my mom's name is Peggy (Peggy-O), her sister's name is Rose (Ramble on Rose), and her brother's name is Jim (Row Jimmy). I went to St. Stephen's grammar school (St. Stephen), I get head shocks and feel other people's faces -often expressions of people I've seen and know- enter mine (the steal-your-face logo), and I'm just crazy enough to think there might be some relevance to Tennessee Jed... I also have known a Cassidy and Mona, and I definitely know Pain in my Heart and New Potato Caboose. My wife's initials are SB, which reminds me of her when I hear Scarlet Begonias and Stella Blue. The first Deadhead I met (who painted the names of all our rowboats at camp the names of different song titles, like Bertha...) is named John, so it's kind of Uncle John's Band, to boot. And that's just the song titles, not the lyrics (which I'm only now starting to register). Who needs acid when you're God, lol? So I know (Weirdness), also too as well.

Here's a list of Grateful Dead songs...LINK.

Here's a story about a real old man down.

I had this on the sideboard, but I thought I'd move it to this post, only (a lot of the song titles are referential to my life in one way or another):