violin

I am here in Oakland, the braided girls have rainbow head colors and smoke cigarettes on their bicycles and I was running through the parking lot with two Boxer dogs, a father and a daughter. In Oakland, where kittens play in broken glass in the middle of the street and the Mexican grandmas and grandpas give powdered sugar kisses.

I have been playing clarinet on the roof, I have been having cactus for breakfast. I came back, for a while I was spiraling in a universe of my own creation. I existed in a very strange membrane! I have a lot of stories to tell, but if I begin now, it's a big mouthful and we haven't even said hello in so long. It was a very nice time, I can remember the details and the very good baguettes and bottles of wine and putting my hands into the lavender in Provence and avoiding the beestings and smoking a spliff barefoot in tights in the club in Rotterdam while Boris played. I’ll tell you soon about getting arrested. The memories are a little muddy. I am trying to recover every artifact from the clay of my memory, brushing off the dirt and running my fingers over the embroidery. I must remember February, outside of Denver, melting into the motel carpet late at night with a sleeping bag over my head under the cheap old desk, talking to Michael. Calling Michael from a late-night house party in Scotland, singing at 5 am. Calling Meghan from a fourth-floor office in Paris, as the sun set, after a catastrophic Sunday performance. I can remember lots of things, waking up in Bordeaux and I can remember the blonde shade of the morning sun on my face, and I can remember the face of the Turkish man who sold me raisins and almonds that morning. I can remember the blonde shade of the carafe of olive oil on the rooftop table when we had a midnight pasta dinner in Treviso. My tongue can recall every blonde shade of the beers of both Norway and Portugal, and I have a few stories about my desperate attempts to score hash in Germany and Spain. It’s all coming back, excuse me, the funny and then sinister boys in Rome who found us smoking pot between a car bumper and stone wall, the man who drooled in Ravenna, “You are a soft cheese” over and over until I made Karl deal with him, holding Dylan and Karen’s dear baby on the beach of pearls in England.

Since August, I have toured the US three times, Europe once and the West Coast once.

I must confess: I saw the alps in Switzerland, France and Italy, I made music in cathedral rooms with painted ceilings and golden accents, I saw the earth textiles quilted across the continent’s most fertile breasts, I had white asparagus and vin blanc in the French countryside in the shadow of castles but still, every morning I had to put my two hands together and pray for mine own sanity, still I had to strong my arms to support the avalanche of stories and songs and sights, still I had a heart that bled redder and redder as I fed it with beauty and then juiced out that beauty into movements of music, still I had to cry tears into the telephone receiver. Sometimes I had to taste a tear on my lip because it is so alien to be a traveler, it is an existence that our ancestors could not have even imagined, it is a sweetness that your friends will want on their own thumbs, it is a bitterness that you can understand if you cherish belonging, if you want to belong somewhere and to some time.

I live here now in Oakland, I have an address. I have no money or food stamps, but I am at work right now. I have a neighborhood and a bed and blankets and a herb garden. Last night for hours we played music, moving from pianos to cymbals and ukeleles and clarinets and voices and there was no audience.

I wish somebody would give me a violn.