the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
me and the man in black ~ September 21, 2006 - 8:42 p.m. so yes, I got knocked off track with my daily writing practice. surprise, surprise. what happened was, I went to strawberry music festival. I had all of these intentions of writing (old-school-style, in a notebook) while I was there, but alas-- it's a discipline I haven't managed to fit into festival world. I was having too much of a wild time, working all day and running around half the night with my strawberry friends. then I got home, and found it difficult to get back into my writing groove. there was recovering from the festi, trying to clean my room, and dealing with a full-on emotional crisis involving a good friend who has some deeply fucked up communication skills, a cute boy, and a night at the opera. I'll tell you more about that one later. and then there was earthdance. man, I love earthdance. it was my second time, and it's rapidly becoming one of my very favorite festivals. there's just so much going on, it's so juicy. ani difranco was one of the headliners, and oh so good to see her again. it made me miss my days with clare, both of us so young and queer and in love, traveling the country and going to ani shows. I miss having a girlfriend. and now I'm in folsom, with johnny cash stuck in my head. I'm working another snack bar gig, this being day 2 of the five-day run. folsom's a bit too far from home for a commute, so I got myself set up with a campsite at folsom lake. it's beautiful and peaceful, balmy weather and sunshine rolling over grasslands, astonishingly gorgeous sunsets through the haze of brown murk that hangs like a curse over sacramento. of course, I spend most of my days in the big-box warehouse store, disconnected from the beauty of the world outside. I'm working this one with a supernice guy who talks and talks and talks. he knows this about himself. "I'm the kind of guy who likes to run his mouth too much," he tells me. self-awareness is a good thing. it doesn't make it any easier to take. some times we actually have good conversations. other times, he tells me long, pointless stories that are neither interesting nor entertaining. he makes lame remarks and laughs out loud at them. I have a policy of not laughing at things I don't find funny, so instead I do this polite smile thing. at this point my polite smile has worn so thin, it's more like a grimace. (and why was that blobby purple guy named grimace, anyway? am I the only one who finds that strange?) and today, supernice guy told me a joke with a painfully long setup. the longer the exposition spooled out (he's not a good joke-teller to begin with), the deeper my sense of dread became. when the punchline finally rolled around, it was so horrifyingly offensive that the polite smile was lost in the jaw-dropping storm of "oh my god! what a horrible joke! why did you tell me that joke!?" I not only said all that (while backing away in disgust), I then spent several minutes explaining that molestation is absolutely, positively not funny. why is that such a hard thing for some people to grasp? he then made up for it by telling another utterly disgusting joke, this one about nuns and ass-fucking. we kinda dropped the joke thing after that. but like I said, he's supernice. and I'm real patient, most of the time. by the middle of the afternoon, though, I'm counting the minutes til he goes on break, when I can get his chatter out of my ear and enjoy a little quiet time in my head. and then, when the day's finally done, I can go down the street to the coffeehouse with free wi-fi and write in my diary. go back to camp and crawl into my sweet little tent and let the crickets chirp me to sleep. roll out of my bag in the morningtime to do it all over again. my world, for the next three days.
(((rings))) |