goodbye/housewarming/album release party

(photos by lindsay.)








an epic watergun battle.

permeation

she writes of these illusory garages,
and sometimes i wonder, too, which
of all these groaning structures
we shove our way through
are closer to the insubstantial

& which instead are built
of pieces solid and knuckle-bruising and real.

like the edges of our blurry cells
bleeding blindly into one another, our bodily
chemistries differing so wildly that
how could we ever have thought
our rhythms would align?

you, & me, & all our anger and adoration
whittled down to the sound of eyelids softly descending.

festival of film

we pushed through that door and up four flights of stairs to art kids, biker hats, and an open bar. eager wandering eyes and everyone gleefully rubbing shoulders as they pass. that tattoo looks stitched on! my girlfriend gets jealous when i dance with boys. look, there's that moustache, and look, there's yr double. if we spike our beer with whiskey it hits our thirsty tongues a little sweeter. (if we water down our whiskey with beer it goes down a little smoother.)

i'll just stand around grabbing beards and taking names, rubbing bellies while we all compare in a circle. did you think i was drunk when i stuck my head through a plant to ask where you were headed? how about when i toppled over in the street, feet still clipped into my pedals, sideways and straight down onto the pavement in the rain?

it's only my second day on these things, you know. (my second night at this place, too, echoes of almost a year ago, but it's looking to shape up about like the last, all giddy toes and dancing hips and new faces to walk me out.)

it's nice to meet neighbors so you never have to find yr own way home.

i miss...

i miss when i could still write, and when i still did write, achingly, unstoppably, rushing home late at night unaware of my legs pumping out fifteen miles and my lids drooping over dry eyes, working out words and phrases and ecstatic syntax in my head, rewriting and rehearsing and repeating again and again until i could get to a pen or a keyboard and solidify it for a while.

now i just seem to get distracted and then fall asleep. and maybe there's something to be said for more of living than recording, but oh! i do miss fulfilling this wordly obsession.

balance

something about the ways we twist and turn, we kick and scream, we flounder blindly upstream. something about the way gentle swinging tunes get our heads to bobbing without even realizing, and the way that my balance has suddenly, startlingly returned, so much so that i rode miles and miles home from work sitting upright with my hands fluttering on my thighs, far from the handlebars.

i remember that night in portland, my brief winter return, after the craft fair and the cheap burrito place with all those bins of spiced carrots and onions, that night when it seemed like a good sign about things, the way that we matched in our short skirts and fannypacks beneath our big messenger bags, our home-knitted legwarmers. (sometimes chicago seems too grey and too loud for my quiet, colorful yearnings; i miss the scruffy dresses and bright optimism i used to clothe myself in, back then when life was damp but endlessly intriguing.)

that night while we pedaled back to someone's house for band practice and i said i'd never been able to ride with no hands, never been able to let go entirely and leave the rest of it up to fate, or gravity, or the intuitive minute inner balancing of my own body, and she told me of a friend who'd finally learned how only when he realized it's not in the thinking about it but in the act of merely doing.

and later, back in chicago on an icy night going home i sat up straight to ease my aching back, raised my hands to rest on my woolly hat, and rode unflinching through the chilly air for blocks before i even realized i'd forgotten to keep my grasp.

i need a bit of urgency in everything, most of the time, but every now and then it's a relief to remember that not everything takes so much drive, so much willpower. maybe the best things of all happen when you forget to pay attention. instinct? or maybe abandon of some sort.

(my fingers pulling notes from the banjo always seem to move better when i stop staring at the strings and let the song carry itself easily along instead)