Tomorrow Never Knows

by

Justice Putnam



8 December 1980 was a Monday. I was a pedestrian-participant in the LA Poetry/ Performance/Art/Punk scene. I sat in a late-morning meeting with the Board of Directors for Beyond Baroque concerning a reading that the publication I was affiliated with was having. Jerry Danielson of Vol No Magazine was going to be at Gorky's in the afternoon. He wanted to introduce me to Mike Watt of the Minutemen and Henry Rollins of Black Flag. We were to meet for beers. After the meeting in Santa Monica I hung out in Venice until about 3pm and drove across town to Gorky's. When I got there, Exene Cervenca of X and Maria Talamantes (who was teaching dance at Cal Arts at the time) were there. The six of us had a few laughs and animated conversation, and then I had to go.

It was always an issue I never brought up with that LA crowd. But I liked Football. I still do. I have a relative that played as an Offensive Lineman for the Rams in the early 60's, I tried to play some at Cal Poly Pomona. But to say that Monday Night Football took precedent over flirting with Exene and Maria was inconceivable to many in that crowd.

I drove to Orange County. The events of that evening have become a blur. I cannot remember much of the game. I do remember I was in a red-neck bar in Westminster. Try as I might, I can only conjure snippets of memory that I can place in some loose time-frame, up to just before 9pm.

That was when the football game was interrupted for a news flash. The clunk and smash of the pool tables suddenly stopped. The whole bar turned eerily quiet.

"John Lennon shot dead in NY."

I looked around. Tears were welling up in the eyes of men I thought incapable of crying, let alone caring about a John Lennon. Not one voiced a discouraging word that Lennon had it coming. There was true and startled disbelief.

I couldn't stay. I drove home to Laguna Beach. I drove up Bluebird Canyon Road to the top of Arch Heights. I looked up the coast toward Huntington Beach. A steady line of headlights and tail-lights snaked around the point at Balboa. I was feeling sentimental. A poem/song came to me,

"... Tomorrow never knows
I cut my finger on the long-stemmed rose
The candles go out
When the winds blow
And tomorrow never knows... "



c 2005 Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches Strophe-Verlagswesen