Author (#23)August 2006 Archives

We drove to Los Angeles on Friday, and we did get jammed in traffic in thistly hills. We did see the soft rolls of California, cloaked in teddy bear skin. We did see the the truckloads of egg-shaped tomatoes and once we were showered with the parchments of garlic.

We went into a church on Wilshire and played the nice piano in the sunny room while the bride dressed in the bahtroom. We smelled every bum bladder. We had champurrado and mole for breakfast, and hot-pink horchata with freckles of walnut and cactus sugar and orange melon. We meditated at the Zen Center and watched all the clear-eyed people eat tomato flesh and herbs in the wooden room. Michael and Meredith were raised there, and sometimes the people would not speak for two weeks and walk in small circles for hours. Cats are not allowed in the meditation room because they are too curious. Michael and I meditated in that room for ten minutes at 1 pm, the blessed sunshine offering its supreme bath, and I was so pleased, you know I love the heat.

We met our own curious cat, a strange angel named Roy, while we drank Popov and Ocean Spray and Regia and Charles Shaw on the roof at Wilshire and Normandie. Roy's teeth were very straight and white and he was on cocaine. He drew a sap out of all of us, and relaxed the security guard, and managed to molest a couple of hours with such a sinister and funny spell. Bless all the facilitators, even the dragons.

I dreamed that I was in my childhood home with my sisters and I saw a big greasy tiger in our yard. It began to antagonize us and I raced to lock all of the doors. The tiger pushed at the doors and scratched me but could not break the glass. We called 911 but the operators did not care. I remember once reading the story of a man in NYC who somehow got a kitten tiger and raised it in his little apartment. The tiger began to get bigger and hungrier, and the man had to move out and he did not know what to do. He would throw hamburgers from the doorway to feed the cat. Society eventually found out about the tiger, but it took a lot longer than you might think. The neighbors thought the growls and purrs were a movie. When the tiger was rescued, they took black-and-white photos of him, dwarfing a white couch, with shit-smears painted on the walls around him.

I remembered just now, the day I left Europe. I was in Brussels. We were at Julie and Ignantz's house. We drove there the night before from Bordeaux and arrived very late and lost. We had to speak on the phone for at least an hour, off and on, to get there. James has a brilliant memory for landmarks, we would have slept on a statue unless. We arrived in Brussels at about 4 am and we drank Duvel and Chimay and I took a shower and slept. I woke up at noon and bought an almond croissant and a baguette and went to a small market to buy cheese and tomatoes and olives because I was about to camp at the airport. There was trouble and I had to demand to go home with a doctor's note. We went to the airport and I acted ill and insistent and my wish was granted. "You will leave tomorrow at 7 am," the man said, and I like that kind of traveling. Everything was arranged and now I did not have to camp at the airport to show my demands, so I could then play solo at Paul LeBreq's house.

We all got into the car, too many of us for the rental, and drove to Paul LeBreq's house when the sun was getting milkiest. His housemates made pots of aromatic food for us to eat before we played and gave us organic beer with butterflied labels. Everyone played very nice and before we played we closed the red velvet stage curtain and smoked and hugged and started laughing. I played one of the best sets I played, and I had to leave for the airplane hours after that. In those hours I drank the butterfly beer and then the Stella and talked long in the garden and then it was so late but I had to stay awake. All the boys puzzled into the small clean area to sleep, the house was sticky from beer and the people were very fluid too. One man liked us so much that he wanted to sleep under his leather jacket on our amps instead of going home. But we were so quiet, and we had to sleep on our amps, or in the car, because there was nowhere to sleep.

Karl slept in the car, but the rest of us put our elbows into stiff couches and floors and they all fell asleep but I had to stay awake to leave for the airport at dawn. Before I left, I sat with a couple of girls and ate half-stale croissants with Nutella and drank tropical fruit juices as the sun came up. 15 hours later, I was wheeling my gear suitcase down 10th Avenue, where our garden in Oakland is, and I saw the leaves growing cheeks. We planted that garden the day I left for Scotland. Now that garden is giving us tomatoes every day, and we need a couple of menstruating girls to mediate over the plants because August Oakland does not offer any sun with temperature and these tomatoes need some heat.

Tomorrow, the album I made with Michael, "The Birds in the Bushes" is coming out. We are having a party at Thee Parkside in San Francisco. If you want to buy an album from me, I'll send a present too.

Today I was in bed at 4 pm with the sun shining on my feet. The men welded downstairs, making Starbucks furniture, and I think I got brain softening. Time lately feels like a fabic and I am on its fringes, and we are clawing at cymbals and putting our teeth into pianos at the edge of the textile. Because it is 55 degrees on Christmas day, there is no heat in August in Oakland, it is simple and mild, no coquet thunderstorms or anesthetized strokes from pure heat. I like the real heat, and I'll go to Sacramento to get it if I have to. I had a dream that I watched Marilyn Monroe get baptized in the rivers of Yosemite in black and white and Spencer and James decorated my room with Queen Anne's Lace.

I did get a violin, and I have been plucking its little tendons for a couple of days, while Michael brushes the cymbal's teeth and gives the sax a massage. I like the tweeker neighbors, they don't give a fuck about noise and they sure do make it. "BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!" the one lady screamed while she was obsessively sweeping the concrete. She said that because another lady asked her if she wanted any leftover dinner. These misfits beat their little kitty with a broom, and that is just a crisis. "I TOLD YOU AND YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO ME!" the lady screamed at her cat. I am trying to steal their cat. There's a lot of women living in that little shack, and they all seem to be kind of indentured servant/addicts to this guy Earl, who is in a wheelchair and has his legs tied together with a rope. "GO ASK YES-MAN EARL!" screamed the lady last night. We sit at the windows and ring our little Indian bells when they get violent, peeking over the sill to watch them huff and puff.

Michael is making me breakfast because last night I made the dinner. I am sitting next to my porcelain Marie Antoinette.