| The Week in Review |
[Jul. 4th, 2008|10:02 am] |
We all know the hardest part: On Monday, we lost Shannon. That's going to keep right on hurting for a long, long time.
I also learned this week that another young kickass friend of mine kicked cancer in the dick! No more lump for Zane! No more chemo! No radiation, EVAR! Zane, you are a freaking ninja god. I love you!
I am really, really good at being unemployed. Not a day has gone by that I haven't been in the pool. I've spent a lot of time walking and looking and listening and letting my thoughts unreel. The days all bleed together, so I'll just give you highlights.
Mount Bonnell: It's not much of a hike, but the view is outstanding. My city turns her beautiful face over her shoulder and smiles at me through eyelashes of oak and juniper. She's a hot goddess and I want to touch every inch of her.
Mayfield Park: I'd never been here before and just sort of stumbled across it on my way out of Mount Bonnell. It's a nature preserve with lots of beautiful trails to walk and PEACOCKS. Like, LOTS of them. The first thing I saw when I got to the park was a huge, gorgeous, regal-looking peacock pestering a kid for his graham cracker. His mom was shooing the peacock away and scolding it for being so pesky. I thought that was hysterical. I also saw a peahen and her tiny little peachicks that were all exact copies of her, only smaller. They sat on a set of stone steps and preened for me. I fell in love with them. I spent an hour sitting next to a lily pond, watching dragonflies and making really horrible sketches of the flowers. It was wonderful.
The Botanical Gardens: I hadn't walked the gardens for a long time. My whim has led me lately to green places, places that are growing and flowing. I put Hammock in the earphones and wandered the Oriental Garden, following the stream down the rocks, down the stairs, to a pool under a shady tree at the foot of a bridge. It felt like a cathedral. I walked up the steps, watched koi curl like slow lightning under lily pads and turtles with mossy backs. I saw a gate and I said, "Hey, I'm gonna walk through that gate!". I walked through the gate and saw a fountain, and I said, "Hey, I'm gonna go look at that fountain!" I looked at the fountain and I saw a grassy lawn, and I said, "Hey, I'm gonna cross that grassy lawn!" I crossed the grassy lawn and I saw a shady tree, and I said, "Hey, I'm gonna go stand in the shade of that tree!" I stood in the shade of the tree and I heard birdsong and I looked up and the tree branches were full of tiny, singing birds in every denomination and right there in the middle of them, about six feet from my face, sat a huge, gorgeous red-tailed hawk. She looked at me. I looked at her. We let that go on for awhile. Then I sat down and started to write. She watched me and then watched other things and she blinked her eyelids of milk and showed me her fierce and cruel beak and she seemed supremely unperturbed. Tiny songbirds danced in the branches all around her, and I was like, "Dude, you know that's a hawk, right?" They couldn't have cared less.
Daily Juice: This is officially my favorite restaurant on Barton Springs. Yesterday I had a juice they'd made up called the Gazpacho Marx. Dear god, I love gazpacho, and this juice did not disappoint. I was in a cloudy mood and sat out front of the store sipping my juice. I was joined by an older guy I'd seen pull up on his scooter and we got to talking about the pornographic pleasure of free time and the health benefits of beet juice. Yum.
Strangers: I have had wonderful experiences with strangers lately, the above example being a good one, but not the best. The best stranger experience I've had this week was at Cafe Mundi right before the slam on Wednesday. I got to the Scoot way early and decided not to just sit there and drink. Instead, I headed over to Cafe Mundi and had a mint yerba mate latte. Delicious! On the short drive over (gotta break myself of the instinct to start the car), I called my dad to plan a trip to Kansas City. We settled on the dates, and I was eager to buy my plane ticket before the price changed. When I got to Mundi, I started looking for a laptop I might could borrow from a kind patron. I asked the counter lady if they had one in their office I could use, and she instead pointed me to a guy sitting in the window and volunteered his laptop for my use. I introduced myself and he offered up his machine. He asked me where I was going and why, and I suddenly found myself involved in a pretty intense conversation about my relationship with my father and some questions I want to ask him. I had a revelation at a recent therapy session and discovered that it really hurt my feelings and made me feel unloved and unwanted that my father moved to Missouri after my folks divorced. He was distant physically and emotionally. He didn't call regularly, he wasn't accessible even when we were visiting during the summers, and I really believed my mom's line about him not caring and not wanting to be a father. (By the way, thanks, Mom!) So I'm going to Kansas City to ask my father why he was so far away and to ask him if he missed us and why we didn't hear from him more. And why my folks split up to begin with. I need his side of that story. My mother is an unreliable narrator.
So, I'm spilling my guts to this total stranger and he volunteers to read my tarot. Actually, he doesn't so much volunteer so much as he just starts doing it. He turned three cards: One for me and what I'm bringing to the relationship, one for my dad and what he's bringing to the relationship, and one for the potential outcome of this conversation I want to have with him. My card was Suppression. My father's card was Slowing Down. And for the life of me, I can't remember what the third card was. Not important. The first two are a plenty good meditation on where I am in my life and where I am in my relationship with my dad, and where I want to end up. So then I realize that I'm just staring into this guys eyes, and it's painful, it hurts to be seen, to be looked at. I'd like to investigate that feeling further.
The Slam: It was difficult to decide to go to the slam this week. I wanted to be near Shannon, and the best way I could think of to do that was to be with our family. So I went, and I'm so glad I did. I saw friends I'd been away from for awhile: Woody, Peter, Dashade, Enrique, Dny... I realized that the slam family is the first family I ever chose, and I have been away too long. Sometimes the slam is tiresome, sometimes the poetry isn't very good. Sometimes it's loud and obnoxious and self-involved. But it's family, and I love it. I needed to grieve with my family, and we fucked up some motherfucking grief, I'll tell you what. We shouted and laughed and wailed and held our breath, we remembered and we got angry and we burned some stuff down. And I held hands with my friends and we cried together. I needed it. We all did. Thank you.
Fires Were Shot: Probably none of you are familiar with this band. If you ever saw my old band, Mariner Airlines, you might have also seen Fires Were Shot. We played together frequently, as the vibes totally gelled. Well, I have been really feeling the lack of music in my life lately. It has been Missing. Imagine my delight when John contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in bringing my guitar over to Clay's house and doing some noodling, maybe a little singing. My heart felt like a firework shot from the cannon of my throat. Big yes! After a couple of weeks of false starts, we finally got together last night.
Holy mother of the baby Jesus.
Fires Were Shot is one of my favorite bands ever, and their music does wonderful things to my soul. The sounds those guys make with their guitars is like two perfect ingredients coming together in my heart to create something unimaginably delicious. Last night, we proved that adding a little bass to the mix is like putting frosting on a cake. Like putting butter on a biscuit. Like adding cornstarch to thicken the gravy. Adding bass just brought everything deeper, broadened every note, gave the music something to stand on. I am in the band and our first show together is Sunday. I'm only playing on one song, but I really hope you can make it. 10pm, Fires Were Shot followed by John's other band, The Paper South. Please come!
I can't think of much else to say, other than that I have been bitten by ants every single day this week. And to urge you to visit http://getwellshannon.com and make a donation (any donation) to help defray the cost of keeping Shannon on life support for two weeks. The last thing Sheila needs right now is a big fat hospital bill. Please, if you can spare a dollar, consider sharing it with Shannon's family. |
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