"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"

So it was time to change the cat boxes, and it being a very Bob day, I elected to put on the Biograph collection (bought on my first trip to Haight Street back in 2000) on and set in on shuffle.

As I toiled over my less-than-envious endeavors, all the Bobs that we've known through the years filled my house: there was the psychedelic sneering Bob of "Positively 4th Street," the earnest born-again Bob of "Every Grain of Sand," the first stirrings of folkie-turned-Arthur Rimbaud Bob of "Lay Down Your Weary Turn," the world weary Bob of "You're a Big Girl Now," and the updated Woody Guthrie next generation Bob of "The Times, They Are a Changin'." Amidst the kaleidoscope of shifts and sounds, and somewhat to my surprise (because how may times have I heard that tune before), it was "The Times" that really resonated and reverberated down to the naked bone.

"Holy shit," I thought, "after so may reeling years, here we are, right smack dab back in the fiery furnace of that bubbling cauldron lauded and lambasted as the mythical "sixties!" People marching the streets for Black and worker rights, the environment pleaded for and denied in turn, a "law and order" Republican vs. a less than popular Humphry, and the white working class left behind capital's global reach rallying behind Wallace. Meanwhile Russia leers and the middle east burns. Fuck. Where'd the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s go? I'd swear they were just here a moment ago.

Alright, so this isn't the sixties. And for very good reason. And being born in '75, how the fuck would I have any idea anyway? Still, growing up in those late 70s, early 80s years, the stench of battle was still in the air. Even a little kid could feel it, even if we couldn't decipher its meaning. But the tremors were still being felt.

But Bob called it then, even as he used the language of dust bowl balladeers (did I mention the thirties overlay?) History marches on like a Panzer. We like to think it can be guided like a dog on a leash, but that's pure illusion. History is a rabid grizzly that will run over and rip through anyone and anything in its path. Mixing the insanity of the human race in is only so much acting upon the stage. Flashing lights fill the night, the distant thunder of machine death grows steadily louder, screams in the distance as vengeance looms like cold steel in the growing mob. Cattle cars roll out of the fog as ships with their chained cargo reach the eastern shore. 1492? 1914? 1939? 1968? The powder keg is set, waiting for a match . . .the nightmare continues, Joyce somewhere sighs in Homeric blindness.

"The sweet pretty things are in bed now of course . . ."