Hurricane Damage

with a nod to George

There’s a type of person who finds their worth by burning with reckless devotion to a blood-and-bones crusade. If only they would go off somewhere faraway and crusade to their hearts’ content where we can’t see them or hear them or smell their burnt gunpowder while we get up early on a Saturday to go buy a hammer and nails and wooden boards to replace the bottom stair step in the basement that’s needed attention since the hurricane brought in some water three summers ago. I would have addressed this problem sooner but that was the summer I learned to play the ukulele. A friend came for a visit and left his uke behind. The instrument did not please him. It vexed him. I don’t know why. I picked it up, strummed it, googled “ukulele chords,” found G; one finger here, one here, one here, and… Wow. Here we go. G is for keeps! It takes wing. Add C and D and a universe of songs swings open. Bring in Em and it’s alchemy. The chords fall like stars. I’ve sometimes wished that I had started to play the ukulele much earlier in life. But you know what? I know I wasn’t ready. You have to kind of get over yourself if you’re going to go to the trouble of purchasing a uke, downloading a tuner app, tuning up, googling uke chords, learning them, then progressions and songs. It’s humbling. You have to be grounded enough to be nourished by the humbling, and that only comes with age—with age or with the gift of finding your gift as a youth and then riding that gift every day right to the end of the line. So even though I would never have been a gifted ukulele savant, I do admit that I wish I had been ready to start playing the ukulele much earlier in life. Sure, and while that daydream is all well and good, I strum on and say my prayers and pray, Lord, pray that the crusader extremists will go away and leave us alone to run our errands, do our chores, hone our gifts, and have a cup of something to wind down after dinner. But they won’t. They can all go fuck all the way off. But they won’t. For now anyway I got the step fixed. It’s not exactly level but it’s fine.

You can find my guru, ukulele chord-master George here: https://linktr.ee/ukuleleg3orge 
And here: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/165228784