#68 - Smoulder

I played my first show this past weekend in a theatre that was most recently a XXX porn house.


Through a handful of incarnations - it went from being neighborhood cinema to.. well.. a somewhat unsavory but still economically-contributing 'art movie' house.  Now it's a really cool and funky (actual) art space, which is kind of cold for an Indiana winter... but there are church pews rather than theatre seats (thankfully, the theatre seats are gone)... can lights and old, cracked brick walls.  I love old buildings - even the ones that are kind of mouldering... all the history and the smell of ghosts in the long velvet curtains.

What's the attraction to the smell of decay?

I think it's tied somehow to the idea that we spring from and go back to the earth - the fecund soil.  Makes the existential footing more solid in the slippery slopes of 21st century teflon life.  I can still smell the past - so it's never entirely gone - brings me more fully into the minute I'm in as I breathe in those microbes from long ago.  And to extrapolate further - in this way, maybe I'll never be entirely gone.  Because people will still be able to smell me.  Especially if I develop some sort of signature cologne.  I'll call it 'Smoulder'.  or not.  Probably not.

72 hours and I'll be on a plane to Europe.  Where the history comes from.  Our 100-year-old moulder hasn't got anything on their 1,000-year-old moulder.  If I'm lucky, I'll get more than one big whiff of velvet ghosts clanking iron chains...  No matter what I'll get a really good cup of coffee.

Answer #67 - Play the odds. But if you're wrong...

Question for a Sunday morning -

Is God really speaking through the Man/Woman on the Television Set who says that God is speaking through them?

Excerpt from Rules for Aging by Roger Rosenblatt:

 

Chapter 9:  Stay Clear of anyone - other than a clergyman - who refers to God more than once in a hour

One sees a growing number of professional moralists who appear on TV telling people what God wants of them. If these folks are right about God, it is splendid news, and one should follow them as if they were Moses. If, however, they have misinterpreted God's wishes - about political candidates, free expression, human reproduction, other issues on which He is said to be communicating His opinions to a select few - or if these professional moralists have mistaken God's voice for say, Elvis's, then paying attention to them may only lead to divine trouble.

Better to play it safe and avoid such people. The danger in hanging around them is that God may be tired of listening to them misrepresent Him and decide to revert to His old bad-tempered tricks with locusts and floods.  Of course, this being the 21st century, He may have refined His arsenal so that He can pick off only the offenders and leave the rest of us unharmed.  But I would not count on this.  God is good, but He may not be that good.

Answer #66 - 42 (forty-two. and thanks for the fish)

Crocuses.  They're out.  Everybody's saying that... means Spring is coming to Indiana.

Somebody asked me, the other day, if I miss California.  Yes and no.  I miss the ocean - I don't miss the static nature of So. Cal - no seasons.  I don't miss living in one consistent season ranging from 'windbreaker to light sweater.'  But that's now, and who knows about the me down the road for whom this may be irresistibly appealing.

I wandered the world from the time I graduated college until I settled in Indiana.  Moved every 2 years.
                                                                                                             

No, this isn't a travelogue.  It's just that it occurred to me, when answering the California question, that I'd still be wandering the world if I weren't a traveling musician in a traveling mudshow.  Touring is what allows me to stay in one place, and not pack up and wander away every two years.

And that's a revelation of sorts.

This revelation may seem more, er, revelatory, because I'm loopy still on cold medicine (but feeling up for tonight's show, which is a good thing) - but still, I'll probably write it down in my own personal Book of Revelations (surely you've got one?  a Book of Revelations, I mean) - to look back on, years down the road, so I can size up whether or not I acted upon the revelation, or let it slide by, unactedupon... and then connect the dots accordingly to the events that followed.

Why would anyone want to do this? (you ask)



Well, I intend to create a flowchart of my entire life, every single event, revelation, decision, and step, when I 'retire' and have the time.  I think it'll be fun and educational for my only marginally interested progeny.  But still - I'll see the shape of the whole thing, of a whole life - and will undoubtedly find the answer that Douglas Adams claims is '42' but that I know is otherwise.

And won't that be a revelation?!  A little on the Beautiful Mind side of things, but whether or not I have entire rooms filled with charts and equations that no one understands but me is my business
                                                                                                                                
                                                          For now, I take comfort in knowing that, in those minutes when the suitcase I always keep packed under the bed begins making a ruckus, I have had the revelation that I don't have to take it out and put it in the car and drive West, because I'll almost certainly be driving West soon anyway...

And in Indiana, the crocuses are blooming.  I like it here.          

Answer #65 - Because Zombies are Big Box Office

The  flu officially has me.  But at least I can talk this afternoon.  I won't go on and on, but it's the second one in 6 months, like I said.  Went to Blockbuster to pick up a couple of movies to get me through the night, passed yet another Disney film, which, of course, begged the question -
  
Why is the mother in the Disney movies nearly always dead?


Dead Disney Mother -      Krista Detor (on Nyquil)

I'm the Dead Disney Mother, you find me at the movies
I'm the one who's dead and that's my part
and sure, it's been successful, this device at the box office
but I'm feeling kind of angry in my heart

Because I haven't got an agent and never merchandising
no lunch boxes have my image on the lids
no royalties or contracts, nothing catered or delivered
and I never see what happens to my kids!

I just start out dead or end up dead, or stick around a little
but I'll wind up dead, bank on it, won't make it to the middle
as the plot revolves around my husband as a single dad -
he'll raise our child, oh, all alone, and yes, isn't that sad?

But I want to SING!
I want to DANCE!
I want to ACT!
Give me a chance!
They're gonna love me, Mr. Disney
Let me live!

I'm the Dead Disney Mother, you'll find me in the forest
or the savannah or in Europe or the sea
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel and Belle all lost me
The Hunchback, the kid from Ice Age, Simba and Bambi

Occasionally, I'm just absent, with vague explanation
but still, a motherless star is on the set
and 10 gazillion dollars later, sure you've filled up all your coffers
but you haven't seen my stuff, not yet!

I can SING!
I can DANCE!
I want a CHECK!
Gimme a chance!
They're gonna love me, Mr. Disney
Let me live!

And not in some inconsequential way like Mulan or Mary Poppins,
Homeward Bound or 100 spotted dogs (plus one!)
Even Spielberg put Dee on the marquee when he came up with his E.T. Mr. Disney, let me have some fun!!

I thought that things were changing when you hired Holly Hunter -
The Incredibles was getting on the track!
But that flaky Princess Diaries mother, with her artsy something or other frankly, she just pissed me off, in fact

I'd rather be in the coffin than make some lame decision
like deciding to conceal the fact that my only child's a princess
who'd inherit a bloody fortune and whatever the he** she wanted - a crown, a throne, a U.N. seat - you know what, you can forget this!

Mr. Disney, I'm not interested in starring in your movies
I've been studying Holly-nomics, and, in my spare time, passed the Bar
So I think a Holly-lawsuit is just what the doctor ordered not the dwarf, no Mr. Disney, this one drives a big black car..

And I can SING!
Yes I can DANCE!
But this for you?
Not a CHANCE!
Night of the Zombies II:
The Zombie Mommies
Shoulda let me live..

(Brains!)

Answer #64 - Nyquil and moonbeams.

I'm snorting a concoction of Alka Seltzer Cold Plus, Sudafed, and Ibuprofen - with a Nyquil chaser.

I am getting increasingly agitated with the Indiana allergens and winter virus-laden air molecules.  I don't have time to be sick, and I don't have time to be unfocused. And yet, for the 3rd time in 6 months, I'm succumbing to invisible forces larger than myself which are succeeding at rapid mitosis in my sinuses.

Vast invisible forces... comprised of millions of mini monsters...

Since I can't fight them, being invisible, I'll be heading to my happy place.. the place in my mind where I sit against a live oak tree, on the side of a stream... where the stars shimmer in the warm summer sky, and there is no sound but the running water.  As I gaze up to make a wish on a shooting star, I can almost make out the outline of something malevolent crawling up my leg and heading toward my nose.


WAIT.  I'm supposed to be in my happy place.

How can I keep my happy place happy when I'm under siege?

I know! Nyquil helps my happy place stay happy...

Ah... that's better.  And the stream is a deep, emerald, Nyquil green - occasionally a blue fishy jumps languidly up and up, arcing and gently gliding back into the Nyquil, I mean water.  As I gaze up to make a wish on a shooting star, I can almost make out the outline of a happy dancing mostly invisible thingy dancing on my nose.


Happy invisible thingy.  Oh happy day in my happy place...

Answer #63 - Land. Or Imminent Rains of Frogs.

I woke up this morning with Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen, running through my head..

Jesus was a sailor and he walked upon the water
and he spent a long time watching
from a lonely wooden tower
and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
he said, 'all men will be sailors, then, until the sea shall free them..'

I pulled a copy of Cohen's Book of Mercy 
off a friend's shelf a couple of years ago.  Cohen's passion for the holy fire is the stuff that converts can be made of.  Me, even maybe.  Watching him sear through layers of text and dogma, snatching up every shard of holy stained glass he comes upon, and then laying all the pieces out in a way that reflects and refracts infinitely more light than the original window ever could have.. well, I could walk that water with him for a while...listen to him speak in tongues...

When I'm close to drowning, I'm more inclined to become a sailor.  Probably like most people.. treading water for so long.. even a small boat starts to look good.. like heaven, even.  There was a time that waking up with a song like Suzanne on my pillow would launch many questions.. 'why?', 'what should I be looking for today?', 'what is this a sign of?'... (I'm another boring romantic. probably won't change anytime soon). So..

What is it a sign of?

Maybe that I'm treading water... maybe time to float... maybe there'll be enough grace left over for me, even if I never make my way on to the boat.  Maybe I'll find the shore...and dig up some colored glass shards in the sand.

#62 - In boxes in the barn

They all left, the house is empty
and when you open the door there's a mirror
in which you see yourself whole.  It makes you shiver -  
Pablo Neruda
 

My cat brushes my leg for no particular reason except that she enjoys a frame of reference that is her, smells like her, is essentially a mini-mirror of herself.  She rubs up against the furniture, the legs of strangers, the legs of tables, the girl dog that doesn't chase her - leaves a small picture of herself everywhere she can, and then settles into a nice nap, nestled safely in her own reflection.

I decorate my house with things I pick up on the road, mementos people send, piles of books, rocks, egg gourds, bottles from old ships... lately paintings of saints, a pope, a handful of wire-haired angels carved roughly out of soft wood by some south american artisan somewhere.

Frame of reference.  Where I've been, who I've seen, what they said, who I am.  I find myself taking down the pieces and pictures along the way that remind me of anything unpleasant or painful - some dark minute when the wide-eyed wonder shrank, thin and gray.. some vessel for regret or scar tissue.. get rid of it, I tell myself.  Life is too short.  The reflection of me, the reference point for the thing I said or the thing she did - or the bristled black rope to the day he left (with plenty of warning) - get rid of it.  I've nearly cleared it all out.

"But it's the scar tissue that holds us together!," laughs Arbutus from the passenger seat.  "It's the compound between the joints.. the knees..the hips.  Scar tissue holds us together.  That and the memory that we used to know how to walk on the water..."

Hm..

Where did I put all the scar tissue? 
Ah, right - it's in boxes in the barn... It hardly whispers anymore.. maybe I'll bring it back in.