There are powerful places here on Mother Earth that can attract and even create formidable interfaces. California produced gold, Nevada produced silver. California attracted Steinbeck, Nevada attracted Twain.
And for Twain, his most powerful interface became the river, the raft and Jim. This powerful trio gave us Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
“What you want above all things on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind toward the others.”
My personal interface came in the form of an arpeggio created in the confluence of a pine tree communing by way of a Sierra Blue Jay, whom I have named “Huckleberry.”
Huck comes by every afternoon at Happy Hour for a Beer Nut, and does a little dance on the deck to my whistling, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
So, what does this powerful interface produce for McAvoy? Give me just a moment to pause and ponder if you will be so kind…okay, let’s call it, sheer harmony.
Should we all tap into a powerful interface, well, we could say goodbye and good riddance to nuclear weapons, and armed drones. What a tranquil place this old world could be.
I once visited that deserted cabin up on Jackass Hill, which was so named before I got there, where Twain penned the Celebrated Frog story. It was early on a sunny morning and I was alone, albeit with the heavenly company of a single Blue Jay. Without a rational decision to recite Twain’s “Blue Jay Yarn” it spilled forth, to the delight of my newfound friend, the jay.
“Oh, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay likes gossip and scandal, and he knows when he’s an ass just as well as you do — maybe better.”
Well, darned if that jay didn’t laugh out loud, and so did I. It was then that I realized I had discovered at least a portion of my talisman, and I decided to deliver that Blue Jay Yarn to a live audience in Angel’s Camp later that evening, which I did.
Was my solo performance with that jay initiated by a tap on the shoulder by a celestial spirit, or was it a result of my being with that jay in a place of power? Either way, it was an otherwordly experience, and I look back on it now as an interfacial moment that helped me along my way as an impressionist of Mark Twain.
Today at Happy Hour I will thank my Huckleberry friend for the serenity he has provided me in his nine years of relaying messages of tranquility from our mutual pine tree friend across the way.
Do I believe in life after death? I didn’t used to, but Huckleberry has made me wonder, so just here we shall leave the last word to our mutual friend, Mark Twain.
“I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet I am strongly inclined to expect one.”
— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”
Want to hear McAvoy Layne tell it? Go here for an audio version of this column.
