Concuss

I miss my journal. I have not had the internet in my home for almost two months and miss toasting my hands over the flame. I try to secretly post at work but I can’t get the spirit in the same way, when I’m trying to conceal. Very soon, my life will be different and steered toward every decadence of the creative effort. I will undamm and let the flow carve a deeper bed. In a few weeks I will live in a commune, in a tent, doing a couple of hours of manual labor every day and having 20 hours in the day for other things, like reading and sunbathing and making rituals to vegetables in the solar powered kitchen. There will be a wedding and I will play music with the community. I hope there are no raccoons there, those banditos scare the hell out of me, grumpy old garbagemen.

After that month, I will go to Portland for about 7 weeks. I will sunbathe and feed Meghan and fill her freezer with blackberry jam. I will walk the city every day and look for friends. I will spook around at night. I will dig up the bone jewelry at RIP. I will write and read. I will go to Peoples Food Co-op every day. I will record music by myself and with my friends. I hope these smart months of work and conservation in Oakland will result in a period of nutritious rest, a perfected relaxation in Portland. When I was free of straight-world obligations for almost a year in Portland, I got an unshakable contempt for provincial existence and I did not properly enjoy the beauty or benefits of that kind of liberty. Instead, I indulged in boredom. I think I learned my lesson.

I am trying to keep up the magic. It’s work all of the time. It just seems so risky sometimes to live this kind of life, as a troubadour, so exposed in order to bask in any and every opportunity. But what if that exposure results in a melanoma? What if I get in a bike accident? What if I get SARS? What if I end up an old maid? What if the evangelical Christians start a Nuevo Fascist campaign and burn our chapels and get away with it? I always try to tick off a list of possible bad fate collisions, as a superstition. But let me tell you this: Last weekend, in the Redwood forests, we fell asleep on the roots of the trees, which were thicker than the neck of even Andre the Giant. I said before we slept, “What if an earthquake happened now? How would the trees react? What would we do for safety?” John asked if I always worried about earthquakes and I said it was a superstitious reflex. And about an hour later, Oakland had an earthquake big enough to wake the Australian band sleeping in Peach and Grave’s living room. So much for superstition dispelling what bad things lurk in the lottery. I guess at least the earth didn’t spit out redwoods and concuss us.