hooves in the flowerbed
Every morning, wash the dish, listen to oldies radio, confess in the kitchen, have coconut and carrot for breakfast with a tea that promotes liberty and justice in a foreign region, walk to the park and savor the solar, get bleached vision in the sunshine she and I side by side interrupting each other's reading with laughing, walk home and kiss all the orange felines, have radishes in Tuscan noontime, read the papers and watch aluminum hustlers and tow-truck drivers, plant on the sidewalk with a laptop to lasso free nodes for writing happy letters, make a record, depart for sulfur mountain just as the sun is pelvis-first in the living room, climb up sulfur mountain tractioning the buttered ashphalt, say little prayers at mountain's top and see a slug who just vomited his own blood, warm breezes down the mountain with teeth in grin because in this town your skirt can blow up over your head on a bicycle and nobody's gonna spear you with a pitchfork and rape you, cut off the spoiled parts of .59 cents a pound and make something from France or Ethiopia and drink wine that blushes the dentals as the sun puddles, darkness shall we just stay home and listen to records or ride to warm crevices for the odors of other pilgrims. Stay up late, long. Later, more longing. Slumber in the bed that is magma on the thermostat, that girl farmed all the sun in Chicago and Croatia and sweats it off in very powerful increments. Sleep for good dreams, sleep in a cradle of good health and well wishes and fewer robbers. In Portland, I get so soft I say "I love you" to the flowers. As long as you don't get burrs in your liver and you don't braid yourself into your lover, you will be very happy. This is undisputed, especially when the sun is showing its face.
This city is in danger. Since I have been back from the Bay Area, I notice a disgusting pathogen mushrooming. When I played with Hustler White and Mikaela's Fiend the other night, I witnessed many new faces to Portland, all alike in the flaunt of their double helix and pasty grimace. These people are not biking, they are honking horns and acting like a fungus on our orchid. It feels too nice at this moment to elaborate on the yuppie problem, but let me say they are all pigs and have no sense of the subtelties of pleasure. They are cows in a bed of tulips. Yeah, I know, who wants to talk about this, why not just ignore them, what to do about it anyway? Living in the Bay Area, I predicted that one day regular workers will be forced to live in barracks because of the appalling lack of protection of their interests. Portland is seething with swine speculators, why wouldn't it happen here? Maybe the rain is the only thing that will keep them away. Let this winter be the soggiest ever, let them be flooded away with their mating games, let us build an arc and be buoyed by the generosity of our satiated spirits which will not dawdle in the dank basements of the caste system.
This is all very passionate. The sun makes me very drunk.
hey eva, this is a nice post, especially that first part. can you elaborate more on the yuppie thing? i agree that portland is gentrifying for sure, but i didn't really see that faction at that party. seemed mostly like pretty young punky kids, but i mostly hung with my friends.
glad to be blog neighbors,
matt
i agree about the yuppie kids taking over. its weird to realize that everything that we've been enthralled with and has felt like a secret in the last few years is becoming of a wider interest and attracting droves of spectators. Call it the Post-Oops era!
reading more and more about past punk cultures...
but yeah, this too will pass. house shows will start getting busted big time, people will die of drug overdoses, hearts will break.
then it'll start all over again like a flower blossoming from the soil of decayed flesh.
Maybe there should be an entrance exam to join the "cool kids club." While I'm as sick of getting my ass groped by white-hats as everyone else, this kind of elitist attitude is ultimately really detrimental. I mean, what's the point of doing this stuff if you don't want to share it with people? I'd be really excited if someone came to a show who was exploring new territory; at least they're making an effort.
cortney, don't get so defensive. half these people are just showing up to party. they don't care about the music.
I've always adhered to the "when in Rome" principle: when at a house show, pay attention to the bands or if you want to chat, go outside. People who just show up to cause trouble are lame. But discounting someone because they're a "yuppie" when they might be genuinely interested is lame, too.
I've found that a lot of the confusion lies in the billing: is it a house party with bands, or a show at a house, where the music is the focus.
you have a good point about the confused billing. i'm always under the assumption that if bands are playing, than its the focus, but i can understand why other people would be in more of a party vibe than band watching vibe.