I Hear That Train A Comin'

 
 

I am a Johnny-cravin', puzzle-crazed woman without a doubt. There is no narcotic that compares to putting together 1000-piece puzzles with good ol' Johnny Cash. Whenever I have a huge undertaking to undertake, like getting ready for a birthday party where I OC clean the entire house right down to and including scrubbing the molding behind the beds, and other hidden places only I will know are clean, I assemble a puzzle as a way to harness all my organizing energy.

First, it will take me days to do a 1000-piece puzzle, and the stall time is essential. Because in that time my subconscious mind is plotting out all the little, tiresome, tedious, tasks I'll have to take on the moment the puzzle is complete. Like picking up Legos, for starters.

Second, a good 1000-piece puzzle is DAYS of stall time, a rest period, that is easily mistaken for an avoidance mechanism by unenlightened onlookers, if you can believe that!

There are two hazards, however, of clearing the table, opening the puzzle box and beginning the Puzzle Piece Exploration and Sorting Process. The first is that it is an unstoppable process. You might be able to get away from the table briefly but the puzzle has a way of luring you while you're in the middle of something else, even if that something is sleep. You are under the puzzle's spell which can only be broken once the puzzle is complete. And even then you still have phantom puzzle, which is like phantom limb. You still think it's there, needing you to come over and scratch it.

Second, there is the hazard of Puzzle Back. In the day in day out, night in night out leaning over looking for "that piece", you don't realize just how heavy your skull is but the fulcrum point in your thoracic vertebrae will remind you with a rhythmic pulse, at first. But after day two, the muscles around that fulcrum point go into complete spasm and they don't stop barking until you stop stooping over that darn puzzle and stand erect. By three or four days of all that leaning over, the spine has completely forgotten what it means to stand tall, hence the dowager hump that resembles my 90-year old neighbor's spine.

I gave three puzzles at Christmas. I got one. And after Christmas I got another. I have put every one of them together, 4,500 pieces picked, piled and placed, to the San Quinten Live concert CD. I know the order of the songs on all his CDs that we own. If you played the songs out of order, I'd know, and I'd know what song was supposed to have come next. Johnny Cash is in my bones. He's in my puzzles -- the ones that "grew up" on Johnny. They're tucked in their boxes on my dresser, waiting to be mailed to Barbara. I hear the Folsum Prison Blues, when I walk by them on my way to the bathroom. That rockabilly guitar is trying to get out: B'bownt-bownt-boowwnt-boowwnt-boowwnt-bownt-boowwnn

I hear the train a comin'
it´s rolling round the bend
and I ain´t seen the sunshine since I don´t know when,
I´m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin´ on
but that train keeps a rollin´ on down to San Anton..