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 |
my weekend: the long version ~ June 3, 2002 - 11:20 p.m. I want to tell you about my weekend, but it's so hard to shape it into words... how to capture light as it flows through your fingers? once it's frozen, it loses its quality and depth, becomes flat, a mundane list of facts rather than radiance and motion. all of this is true. an attempt: breakfast at the blue sun, a gorgeous spring/summertime day. alicia behind the counter, and she is radiant, floating this far off the ground. she is in love, in lust, in something. I have never seen her like this, and when I ask her how she's doing, she says fabulous. and means it. I talk to tom, who is sweet and kind and sincere, and who I've known from-around-town for four years or so, or all of the time I've lived in boulder creek. he's fatty eggroll tom, who vends at music festivals all summer long, an old vending buddy of steve and mongo's from dead tour. I worked on tom's crew at a string cheese festival last year at horning's hideout. tom seems less shy than he used to be, somehow. less nervous. there's a calmness about him now, a centeredness. we talk about buddhism, about vipassana. and tom-- is becoming an issue. I've sensed for some time now that he's attracted to me, but I've been able to ignore that fact so far. but his calmness, his centeredness seem to have boosted his self-confidence, so that he's starting to say things like we should go hiking sometime. how he used to go with his girlfriend but now that they're no longer together, he doesn't always want to go alone. and so far. I'm still avoiding the issue. because I hate the discomfort of dealing with it head-on, although I know it's the only clean way to do it. I've been rehearsing in my head: I'm just not in that kind of space with you, tom. or, maybe I think you're really great, but I don't feel that kind of energy with you. and both of, all of these things are true. I do think tom is a great guy. buddhist, even. and good-looking, I suddenly notice, appreciating the way his new centeredness radiates from his blue eyes. but I'm just not in that kind of a space. and soon I'm not going to be able to avoid the issue anymore. but when tom asks what I'm doing, and do I want to check out this party? I say yes. because I'd been planning on going to that party anyway. because that was, in fact, why I made the trip. and partly, it's true, because of a boy. a boy who is not tom, and who I wouldn't mind being in that space with. whose band is going to be playing at said party. and who mentioned, casually a couple of weeks ago, that I should come. so tom and I head to the party. he lives less than a mile away, and suggests that I park at his house and we walk there (a beautiful, beautiful day), but I am reluctant to leave my bus with its cache of survival items (warm clothes, blankets), and I don't want to be tied to going back to tom's house. so we drive my bus from tom's. and the party is on one of those mountain backroads, a house with a back deck and a firepit and things are mellow. a small group of folks to start, passing smoke and lazing in the afternoon sunlight. I know many of the people here, and I'm easy with those I don't. this is boulder creek, this is my home. I know this place. and when I see the firepit, I have a sudden flash of remembrance-- I've been here before-- and I realize that this is the house where jess' birthday party was last fall. back when james and I were smoking so much weed that my mind became thick and dull, and nothing made any sense. I remember taking him to that party, and empathizing with his awkwardness and discomfort, but wishing I could just relax and have fun. we didn't stay long. but this time I am here and blissfully unencumbered by attachments. although we arrived together, tom obviously knows he is not my date and gives me lots of room. so much so that I don't know quite when he leaves, just that at some point I realize that he is no longer there. by which point he has, I know, seen me flirting with graham. or graeme. I don't know yet how he spells it. and this is the boy I've been flirting with. the single energy I am responding to, out of all the varied interests and attractions I've been sensing lately. it being, after all, springtime. and I'm not convinced, just yet, that there's a good reason for me to be connected to anyone just now. so I'm being very low-key, for the most part. I am certainly not letting myself fall into any of those attachments that happen just because you've talked yourself into it. I've talked myself into things. and learned a hard lesson from the last one. for now, it has to be absolutely, completely, ecstatically right-- or it's just not happening. I don't need the drain of another thing. and for some reason, graham (graeme), lights up my being. I respond to him. in spite of the fact that I doubt I could ever get into something serious with him. in spite of the fact that he drinks too much. he's scottish. he has that sharp celtic wit and he makes me laugh. charisma. intelligence. and yet I don't know him at all. and I know that I don't know him. and so. I take it pretty low-key. we flirt, we lean against each other on the couch and soak in each other's energy. we have a silly conversation about INXS. we talk about my bike, and when I tell him the model he knows exactly what I mean, and asks questions that prove it. he talks about this band, and they haven't been playing together all that long, and he's a little keyed up. it's a flirtation, is all it is. we go away and come back to it, go away and come back. he's drinking too much and he knows it. I'm smoking too much and enjoying it. the potential hanging in the air is delicate, and in the beginning I think that neither of us knows what will happen. it's a flirtation, is all. a potential. and then alicia arrives, and she is already wasted and her energy is high, and she's flirting with me which is new and unusual and deeply enjoyable. later I think that maybe alicia's arrival has something to do with the energy shift I sense from graham at some point, the gentle pulling away. the potential still exists, but it is no longer radiant and concentrated around our heads, but diffused into the air, a subtler, less immediate potential. potential closer to the maybe someday flavor. and I wonder too, if graham is the one alicia hooked up with the night before, the one that has her looking so radiant today. and at some point it feels as if she is trying to draw us together into a threesome. an idea which I am not at all averse to. but graham pulls away from us both, gently, and we release him, tasting the sweet residue of potential on the backs of our tongues, and we dance. and we dance. and there's lots of people dancing, first to music on the stereo, and then to music played by friends, not always well but with lots of heart. and we clap and hoot and give up the love. and we dance. and we dance. I dance the kind of dancing where the music moves through me, flows through me, where I am taken up by it and I relinquish control. alicia does too, and I am amazed that I've never known this about her, never known that she could dance. she dances with everyone, and when she dances with me, we tear it up. it's been such a long time since I've known a girl who could dance like that with me, and we tear it up. I can't believe we've never danced together before, I tell her later, sharing a pipe with her and a gentle dreddy boy named john. and john says the way you two were grinding it up, I can't believe you've never danced together before! and so it goes, with friends and music and laughter, the house full of people now and spilling onto the back deck, into the front yard. there are guitars around the fire, and I sing a bit. a sister does an incredible fire dance and later gives me her number, so that I can attend the firedancing class she's giving on wednesday. a day I was planning on being in santa cruz anyway. at some point graham's band is playing and the living room is packed and we're all dancing. there's a middle-aged couple next to me, somebody's parents probably, and the woman picks up my energy and lets loose, shaking it down and dancing with heart and soul. her husband can barely keep up, and he's grinning with delight at seeing this side of her, and I'm laughing out loud with the delight of watching her reconnect with something true and bright and wild within herself. when the music stops and we are catching our breath, I turn to her and say you can jam, sister! and she is radiant, and laughing, and she says well, yeah, for about 45 seconds... but her energy is high and joyful and I just love it. I have a wonderful time at the party, and I stay almost too long. the toilet in the bathroom breaks and can no longer be flushed. someone puts angry music on the stereo. the women dwindle, and the men who remain are hungry, their eyes and energy tracking the movements of the remaining females. I have smoked so much that I drift from room to room, inside and out, like a balloon running low on helium. and then, amidst the grit of a party gone on too long, I rediscoverDesiderata on the bathroom wall. I haven't seen that poem since I was a teenager, and as I read it, everything inside me just seems to fall into place. so simple. so true. I get my journal out of the bus and stand in the bathroom copying it down. and then I am ready. I track down my sweater, my water bottle. I discover that I have sacrificed a sandal to the party gods, carried off either by the free-flowing stream of puppydogs or a foot fetishist, either seems possible. on my way out the door, the whitehaired beatnik with no sense of rhythm asks if he can get a ride back to boulder creek. I don't think I'm going too far, I tell him. I crawl into my bus and crash, with the noise and the lights and the drums of the party still loud, and me in the driveway, I crash. no energy to figure out the fold-out bed, which I think may be broken in some way, shape, or form, and so I curl across the couch seat it manifests as when folded, roll myself into blankets. crash. wake at dawn with the drums still going. I am sleepily amazed that the neighbors have not complained. fall back into sleep. I wake to a damp, grey morning. stretch and wander into the house to take one last look for my shoe. folks are passed out on the living room couch and floor, others are awake and clearing away the debris. it smells like used up fun. there's coffee on, but I'm more than ready to leave. I resign myself to being shoeless, although I will soon remember the pair of running shoes I've got in the bus. and I will remind myself to always keep a spare pair of shoes in the bus. I drive to a spot I know, a quiet parking area where I won't be hassled. I change, brush my teeth, get myself together. head to the blue sun for breakfast. and there's more, yes, but this has been an epic tale and I am up much too late. I'll tell you about corinna tomorrow.
(((rings))) |