thirty forty. forty fifty.

I attempt to write today, but find myself distracted by so many things. The fly buzzing at the window, that I do not let out. The plants that beg to be turned, so that the other side of them may twist to the sunlight. The blank page on the computer screen, in another document, that asks for my attention. The green tea and cookies before me. The Unbelievable Truth song, coming from the speakers that asks my body to move. The flamenco guitar, leaned up against that plain wooden chair, with the light hitting it just so. I remember reading in an article years ago, a quote from thom yorke {of radiohead} who stated {to paraphrase} that sometimes it was best to just sit and stare at a guitar, rather than play it. Sometimes, that’s when it had the most strength and energy. The most beauty. So I stare.

And then Jacob golden comes on and I wonder about him. I drift back to those days watching him play [or playing the same bill myself] at luna’s café in sacramento. I wonder where people fly off to, where their lives take them. Hawaii. Greece. India. Hell, Canada even. So many amazing people, in so many different places.

I got an email recently from a friend I’ve had nearly seventeen years now, and my mind gasped at the time there. How quickly ten becomes twenty. Twenty thirty. Thirty Forty. Forty fifty, and so on. Time, the illustrious beast, that we so love and so despise. My wife sits on the porch reading, and the trees move. Though I cannot see her from where I sit, I like the knowledge of that fact. Sometimes, it is simply knowing some such thing, that gives us what we need. The mere existence of something or someone. A place. The simple fact that in some city in North Carolina, there is a great man, with a cup of coffee, writing a novel. Sometimes, I need nothing more than that.

{just wait for the snow motherfucker.}

The piano comes in over itunes and I think to myself, “goddamn, this song is good. what is this?” ah. Radiohead. “how I made my millions.” The greatest beauty of itunes, is that I find myself listening to b-sides that I wouldn’t listen to all that often if I had to pull out the discs and put them in. sometimes, it seems so much work for one song. Then again, the difficult things in life are usually the most rewarding. Of course that said, in recent discussions, I told keri that I absolutely refuse to get rid of my cds. I find something so vacant without the tangibility of the disc. It is pasta without bread. A shirt, on which the sleeves are just a hair too short.

So I sit here writing in the countryside of Canada, which admittedly sounds terribly romantic. {Just wait for the snow motherfucker.} In ways it is I guess. As picturesque as it sounds. A few days ago, I rode my bike several hours for a tube of toothpaste. I suppose own grows rather spoiled living in Berkeley. Tom’s Of Maine is everywhere. I do of course recognize the humor in my having felt like I had accomplished something meaningful in this small journey. The mind laughs and reels. I chastise my own parents for being set in their ways, and here I am riding my bike for hours so that I don’t have to use crest. Goddamn.

So I busy myself with working on the book in small increments, writing new songs, and bothering ron for advice about just what items to buy as I rebuild my recording studio. Why does it seem there are so many things, so many choices? I guess because some of us want Tom’s of Maine.

And now it is inti illimani. Whenever I hear this music, I long so badly to find myself walking along some street in south America on some hot summer night. Must we romanticize everything?

quite dormant, for quite some time.

and what does one do, when it all comes crashing to a stop? the brakes lock and wheels cease their spinning. the trees no longer passing by in a blur, stand still before you. where has the grace of it all gone? where is mike and where is that ferocious need to find a place to sleep? well.

you sit about listening to the smiths presently, hanging new paper lanterns. oh the smiths. they will always remind you in being in love with angie burling at the age of sixteen. that impenetrable urgency of youth. you liked candles and paper lanterns then too. i suppose there are things that will always remain the same. like my knowledge that ben jahn will be standing in some bookstore in twenty five years, looking at poetry in a pair of blue jeans. this i know. yes indeed.

so rather than ramble on at the moment scrambling for the words, i punch out a few simple thoughts, at the close of this grandiose journey. the words from the heart about the end of it all will have to wait. thus, a list if you will:

1. the writing about the great sitting will not stop, but it will fall away from here and exist only on my computer, not yours. mike, keri and i, have begun working on a book about the trip. i, we, all three will update you as updates exist. there is so much that was unspoken, untyped.

2. we will be driving the route, leaving point reyes on october 25th. simple as that. there are several reasons for this. {good god, are they completely nuts?}

3. i will begin writing again about the daily things that move me. chipmunks that eat from my hand. the turning of leaves. wind.

4. music. there is a fire in me that was quite dormant, for quite some time. i will soon be releasing many things. re-recording old things and beginning entirely new ones. i shall update thee.

oh reader, there is so much in me at the moment, my seams swelling and tearing. bones spreading like a woman's hips after the birth. there is blood on the floor, and the cries of new love. new things. a new world that awaits.

"take me out tonight because i want to see people and i want to see light..."

we are all white birds.

there are some things too big for words. too sweeping and panoramic. too evasive of time. one night, beneath the coldest, darkest sky you've felt in some time, you ride across the state line and find yourself in maine. maine. that word, that state, that concept, that owned and owed you so much, has found its way here. you are surprisingly nonplussed by this fact, but also know that you cannot even begin to process it all, for it is too much. so you and your dear friend stop behind some hotel and sleep the night. you rise, and spend a laughter filled day, pedalling into your final city of cities; portland, maine. how has this all come to pass? later that night, you will find yourself on a bus with your soon to be wife, riding to a restaurant where you will meet mike and celebrate his birthday. you will have dinner, and the three of you will walk back to the hotel where you will stumble into sleep.

you spend the next day floating about the city in a haze of the most surreal colors, and have dinner at an amazing restaurant before heading off to sonya and bob's, where you spend the next two days lavished by the brilliance of wonderful hosts and a miraculous bakery.

alas, there is simply too much to tell.

then you are in a car, riding up the coast to an inn on the water. it is august 29th, and the fog, in all of its physical wonder, has come pounding in with wings. great white wings. you will think of wings again, merely days later, when you are riding your bike alone on some farm road in eastern canada, and you see swans on the water. a baby with its parents, the father with wings spread and held back, pinned to the air. and you and keri are swans. you become white birds, standing in a room in some new place. or hovering by the quiet sea.

you dress and stumble about aimlessly. you walk down to the water, and stand there waiting. the last of the waiting. you look out over the blue, and listen to the small boat, crashing into the dock where it is moored. it twists in the water, woodenly. and then mike and keri are coming down the hill. they are laughing. it is all a part of some dream, some beginning and some end. somehow, there is everything and everyone here. nothing is absent. you recite after the woman. you place rings upon fingers and you kiss. read your own words. and you are married.

you are one with the misty air, and you fly out, over and above the water, snakes and butterflies and white bats, trailing behind. the champagne spills about. mike pulls from the bottle. the three of you have dinner, and the laughter nearly breaks your ribs.

you spend the next day wandering about. napping and sitting on porches, watching the sun fall into the arms of the fog. this fog, this endless fog, is one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen. you sleep again, and bring mike his coffee to the rented car in the parking lot. you drive and drive, singing along with the radio, you're first backtracking of the trip. you pass places you recall, and feel the sadness of change and the end of things. and then you are there. you are on the corner, across the street from claudette's house, outside of charlie's where you had both lunch and dinner, and mike is unloading his things. the tears are there, but they remain inside. you have a plane to catch.

and there in that moment, with mike on the corner, you standing by your new wife, the great sitting is over. you hug and high five. yes, i said high five. you shake your head a bit in dismay, climb back into the car, and drive off, looking back as mike goes through his bags searching for something. you wonder why things have to end, an answer you know, and you wonder when you'll see this man again who you've grown to love so deeply.

what a mix of emotion you feel all in an instant. new wife. new home. end of bike trip. goodbye to friend. the stopping of movement.

so you drive off. you catch your plane, your wife holding your hand as the giant steel {?} bird undulates in the sky. twists and dips and turns. this breaking of the sky is like new life itself. you still despise flying.

and then, somehow, you are here. here in canada, trying to find the heart of your new home. you wish it would snow now, so that you could crawl inside of it, cold and white, surounding your skin and your bones. you need time you say. so much time to absorb it all. you walk around the house, wondering where to put your things. your wallet and your shoes. the smallest of things matter the most sometimes. you spend an afternoon working on your bike, and ride off to some town whose name you've heard so many times, but never seen. never known. you see the white birds, the swans, and think back to mike on that street corner, your wife. your wife, your wife, your wife. you stop, and stare at them for some time, drifting from one place to the next, and then you ride off, as you drove that day. you move. it is such a simple thing.

for how else could you end such a journey? how else? or perhaps, such things never end. perhaps the end of this simply does not exist. wings spread and held back, pinned to the air.

we are all white birds. all of us.