EARLY MORNING RAIN / JUNE 2009

Here's Bob Dylan singing Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain," on an album released in June of 1970 and titled "Self-Portrait"

In the first week of July of 1970, R flew from Vietnam to Honolulu, Hawaii, so that we could spend a week together in the middle of his year in Vietnam. It was bittersweet. There was the startling sound of firecrackers all week. He was edgy. I remember eating breakfast with him in a pancake restaurant and hearing some of the songs from "Self-Portrait" over the restaurant's sound system. At one point during the week he said, "I never should have come here."

It took me a long time before I could even begin to understand what he was trying to tell me.