like teeth to the gum {and tonight i will play}

sometimes {as i suppose i have most certainly mentioned before} the words will not move from me. they are attached like teeth to the gum. strong and white and unmoving. {slowly shifting?} perhaps i should brush them and somehow coax them to the tips of my fingers. seduce them. tease them and bite at them. their shoulders. clutch their hands and remind them that there is no fear in the world out here, no fear in true love, only love itself.

i write and delete and write and delete...which is rare, usually i just write. at first there were words about rafael riqueni and the tone of his guitar. how for some reason, his playing feels to me so languid and nostalgic. but cooler {cold, temperature-wise, icy, but not frigid, not icelandic, warm and rich, but cool. barcelona, not cordoba...bla bla. slack. then i wrote of christian kiefer because of the word slack and that song of his, with the most spectacular string playing in the world.

"you're like a book of familiar quotations, and every insightful meditation, like wire come into my heart, keep the skeletons from taking apart..."

then it was that miserable apartment in manhattan with grafitti in the hallways, and needles on the floor and people getting shot. and then it was mike and i cycling in the wind, those unbearable 50 mph gusts in the valley. lunging into the wind, lips raw from its scraping and lashing, us giggling at the absurd power of it, and the feeble, feeble, feeble bodies we possess. humans. then it was my fears and my love for this bike trip that will ensue in a mere 32 days. 33. 34. where will i be in 34 days? where will i be in 334? oh how life takes us and shakes us around sometimes, leaving us dizzy with joy. how can one know so completely and with such certainty what their path in life is, where they must go next? i have never felt like this. all senses heightened, everything in such a copious flurrying. scurrying, blurrying, purring. a blessing to say the least, and these open arms the ones i've longed for. asked the universe for. waited for. pined for, though i still pine. the universe itslef embracing me, all of me. mussing my hair {what little there is at the moment} as i move from old places to new ones, the rules change and the answers and the truths fall into me like sleep. the veils drop, and i come alive in this place of transition. and there were more words, but they are mine now. not yours. swallowed. mine mine mine. mine oh mine oh mine oh. "oh me oh my oh look at miss ohio."

and tonight i will play what will be my last show for {likely} a very long time. christian and i at {yes, a revisiting of paragraph one} the true love. how i will miss those nights, deep in my core, sitting in some place, somewhere, talking to christian before one of us plays. i keep feeling like it should somehow be grand and ritualistic, but my busy world demands that i simply arrive and peel back the skin, for what else can we do? peel back the skin.

one little scoop

i am so often amazed by peoples' foolishness and general stupidity. yesterday upon returning home from my ride, i saw a line of approximately 200 people snaking down a city block in berkeley. upon closer inspection, i discovered that they were waiting for a free scoop of ice cream. no million dollar giveaway, just one little scoop. i sat on my bike for a moment, and watched the line not move. i estimated the wait time to be about 1.5 hours, and chuckled to myself for a mile or so. several hours later when i drove by, the line was longer. if i could have afforded it, i would have stopped and given each of these people three dollars. alas, the power of "free."

ode to dusty.

there once was a man named dusty, who played for some baseball teams.
when he caught the ball in the field, his big white choppers would gleam.
i wonder what kind of paste, he used on his clean toothy grin.
i wonder if it ever dribbled, down through the cracks of his chin.

i see him standing there, looking into the bathroom mirror.
i see him at the barbeque, sucking down a beer.
the beer has gone straight to his belly, rotund it has become.
i imagine if he rode a bike like me, his penis too would go numb.

but dusty has aged a bit now, and coaches from the side of the field.
he teaches the tricks of the game, the power a bat can wield.
i will not be naming my boy dusty, nor carl nor pete nor bruce.
i can only imagine the pain, and the bad things such a name could induce.

but today, i will not play baseball, instead i will ride my own bike.
i will talk on the phone to keri, to christian, to randi and mike.
i will make myself some lunch, some bread, chips, and tuna fish.
i will listen to smashing pumpkins, perhaps their first record gish.

the sun it shines on the earth, and the flowers they stretch to the sky.
ol' dusty eats those seeds, and his belly says he likes pie.
if i were starving in the snow, up on that pass they named donner.
i would eat him and savor his fat, like the soap made by ralph bronner.

but it is time to go now, to snack and ride through the hills.
it is time to mail some letters, and time to pay some bills.
i wonder what dusty is doing, on this fine april day.
dusty, oh my dear dusty, baseball you will always play.

morning. quiet. tea.

a brown and green lizard with blue racing stripe {s} sitting in an old tattered shoe on the roadside. an injured bird with yellow and blue and white and red on its wings, that won't let me close enough to help. me, simply wishing to get it out of the bike lane so that it may die, {if dying is what it's doing} off in the trees. oh, our human minds...perhaps it likes the bike lane. the warm cement. the strong smell of eucalyptus trees as the air warms. the smell of the leaves on my hands as i grab them from the big arms of the big trees. the pj harvey song running through my head. the sound of my shoes as i walk my bike that won't steer correctly {at all}. word of caution: don't fuck with the headset on your new bike unless you have at least some vague idea of what you're doing. the rush of adrenaline as i rode down through the bushes and trees and dirt and rocks into a ravine. {not by choice} two little girls, four and six maybe, gathering wildgrasses in a field with their mom. the young boy, 9 maybe, giving me a 'thumbs up' as i fight my way up the steepest street i know of in the east bay. the pain in my lungs and legs as i ride up said street. the breeze that blows in the open window while i shower, cold on wet skin. the clock that moves and moves and moves. sleeping. strong and soundly, but remembering no dreams. where do they go when they vanish? morning. quiet. tea.

does steve martin want to buy mike's car? {or help me sell my car to sean?}

well damn. as i figured, none of you have come forth with any help regarding sean's purchase of my car. {though my train still chugs along diligently} so i throw out another morsel: mike said the other night as we giggled about my desire to sell my car to sean penn, that he can really see steve martin behind the wheel of his honda. now i can't remember the stats for certain without contacting mike, but i believe it is a 4 door 2002 accord, with 58,000 miles. i seem to recall bluebook being in the ballpark of 10 or 11 grand.

nothing fancy really, but personally, i still enjoy the "manual roll down windows." they somehow make me feel like i should be driving to the dump with my dad at the age of thirteen, looking for porn amidst the sour trash heap, and stopping for a slurpee on the way home. i could never decide between cola or cherry. now they have too many goddamn flavors, a microcosm of america itself. bloated and bright and big. a a dustball of forgotten truth. we would listen to the giants game on the radio, as i silently rooted for anything dusty baker did. how can a thirteen year old boy keep from loving a man named dusty baker? i miss that time with my father so deeply as i'm sure he does as well. {though he may not know i was secretly scouring the dump for smut, but then again fathers seem to know so much more than we think.} and now we live three hours apart and those sundays afternoons have been reduced to the occassional visit, wrought with the time constraints of 'adult life' whatever the fuck that is. adult life. cars and bars and movie stars. i saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read simply, "send bush to mars." i giggled about that. perhaps i shouldn't as it certainly isn't very loving or forgiving of him, but still i think it's funny.

perhaps we should elect steve martin president. he and sean could ride around in their new cars, flying the flags of justice. it may sound funny, but considering the current governor of california, perhaps they'd have a shot.

anyway, if any of you know steve and could let him know about mike's car, we'd greatly appreciate it. while you're at it of course, perhaps you could ask steve to let sean know about my car. or hell, we could really mix it up, and have steve sell my car to sean. the possibilities are endless, and i haven't even begun to tell you my ideas about asking sean to buy me a goat to tow behind my bike past him and some friends having dinner outside somewhere in marin. long story. and alas, dinner awaits.

does Sean Penn want to buy my car?

so here's the situation: as we can see, i have indeed returned to the land of magic boxes, and invisible things. of course what this means, is that i finally removed myself from the dungheap of that pc i had, and now click away at a brand new {shiny even} powerbook G4. this machine is AMAZING! goddamn. though my excitement abounds, what this also means, is that my financial woes regarding the great sitting have just become a bit heavier. amazing how quickly such things can gain weight no?

anyway, this has prompted me to ask for some help. i have more or less concluded that i should sell my car to finance the trip. the only problem is, that i got the idea in my head last night that i want to sell my car to Sean Penn; which doesn't seem all that absurd considering he lives about 40 minutes from me, and his car was stolen not so long ago {?} in the city. of course, i have no idea how to contact him which poses a problem. do any of you know him?perhaps you can help...i'm not going to drop the price for him much below blue book, though i will take a bit off {as i would for anyone} since the car lacks hubcaps. hubcaps. who the hell needs hubcaps? {in case you do connect with him, it's a 1997 saturn wagon with 115,000 miles...dark green...i'll put a photo up soon}

today, there is sun and bigpuffyclouds scattering the sky. they are still and unmoving. my mind drifts and sails and counts the weeks and the days and hours and i feel drunk though i am not, and i remember wine on the rocks and songs about "i am on the rocks again" and records on which i have FINALLY finished recording the guitars, and next the vocals, and oh my legs, my bloddy exhausted legs. carry me my friends, carry me. all the way to maine and then? so many question marks. ?????????????????????????????????????????

the great sitting

some countries offer free health care. the United States has that "popcorn" phone thing, where if you dial the letters POPCORN, that woman's voice comes on and tells you what time it is. for free! imagine that. hell, as long as the first three digits are 767, you can punch in any other four that you like. such fun with words. pop-pigs. pop-dogs. hell, whatever you want. pop-shit. pop-fuck! the choice is yours my friends. never worry...if you happen to find yourself in an emergency room with a missing limb bleeding to death, being told "no, we can't help you," you may ALWAYS call and check the time to make other arrangements. or just to adjust the watch that fell from your severed arm. glorious.

meanwhile {as i check the time} i wrestle with my computer. not only have i acquired some awful virus, thusly killing my email, and making it nearly impossible to get online, a few days ago the part that holds the screen onto the body of the laptop snapped in half. good lord. it used to be that my energy seemed to effect the internal workings of these machines {i'm not kidding...ask people in the know} but now the mechanics of them? their shells? arghhh. its function rate is at about 20%. {thus pardon my absences if they grow}

this of course creates a problem, as i will be riding my bike to Maine this summer and posting here all along the way, from the middle of nowhere. or sometimes somewhere. needless to say, the burden of needing to buy a new computer to make this happen, lays a bit of weight upon my shoulders. weight that is easy to shift, but weight nonetheless.

and so, my world changes; the computer, simply a small microcosm of so many other things. not broken things, just changing things. i've been thinking for some time now about how i embrace the changes of my life, and what i say to you my dear reader {s}. i've run things through my head a million times, and suffice it to say, that the words still linger and hover in my belly. my chest. oh, but things are changing, and one of these days the flood will rise and swallow us all and carry us. it will have wings like birds, and we will see the earth spinning on its axis from above. i will tell new stories and old ones. so many things you haven't heard. everything will stay the same and everything will be different. for now, i say simply that above the orange trees is becomming a different animal.

one of the two new records is indeed done, and the other is growing closer; albeit slowly. kristina is making her own record, which i dare say from the sound of it thus far will be absolutely spectacular. Tori Amos and Sigur Ros sitting around listening to quiet Radiohead songs. Ron works making sound with the closest of old friends; a flurry of lighthearted music with perhaps a bit of beer here and there. i imagine The Pixies and The Cure all grown up and looking back at the years. and we all chip slowly away at "the work of kings." as for me, if you find yourselves curious, i believe i explained it best at the great sitting. click on why.

may we walk unafraid.

whale hearts

The sun drops and night begins its seduction in earnest. The streets of the mission are littered with people, so many of them carrying plastic bags, shuffling from this place to that; their footfalls, an everpresent reminder of gravity. Odd how drastically different people of the same species can move. I wonder if it is the same with other animals, or if we are bound in this way by our humanness? I think it must be the humanness, for it has been proven to me time and time again, the great effects of the heart on the way our bodies move across the earth.

The young ones, mostly my own age I suppose, are dressed to kill with big shoes and tight pants and wallets with chains and frilly things on their arms. Skirts. Behind them, the workers walking home with tired eyes. big hands. White paint on blue pants.

The shade of the sky drifts into darker places and the cars honk at the busses full of people. The bright, bright busses. I used to ride the train back and forth from davis to mountain view quite often, and I always wished that the trains had no light at night, so that we could see the world pass by with more clarity. What is our obsession with all of these fucking lights? these lights so painfully loud. are we all just afraid of the dark? Perhaps so many peoples’ lives are just too dim without them. I secretly pine for a world lit only by candles, their soft glow guiding our way gently like whale sounds.

Whale hearts.

A cinema of enormously slow movement.

my bed calls to me. begs even. i will lie down and clutch the pillow. stick my feet out. smoosh, smoosh, smoosh. the bed swallows me.