Synchronous

“Having the same period and phase”
It’s odd. Repeatedly.
Just when things are bad, quite bad. And I’m angry, so angry. And depressed. An odd series of events frequently occurs. They don’t have to be big, just oddly arising out of the muck (like the spontaneously arising lotus) which, if I’m paying attention, remind me that this is how real magic works. In it’s time. For my ultimate benefit. And without force and manipulation. Not to buy me a cadillac, but to remind me that there is some method to this madness.

I wanna be elected

AM earworm today, Unfinished Sweet - Alice Cooper.
What seems strange, it’s from the Billion Dollar Babies album and it’s odd because it’s my least favourite song on that album. The one song of the whole thing that I don’t know deeply, intimately and pretty much by heart. I could pretty much sing every single song from BDB to you at the drop of a hat (so don’t drop any hats around me or you’ll regret it) and yet this is one that I had to actually look up the title.
It’s also odd because for the first time I really realized it’s about dentistry and that has been a dominating theme of the last couple months.

I got one of those boozy phone calls last night. Marital issues, and they were clearly angling for a couple hours of free therapy. I could have sacrificed for it had it not been for the boozy mess club facet. I can’t do any meaningful work with someone who’s drunk. And if you’re calling me at 10:30 on a Sunday night you are definitely asking me for a sacrifice. So, sorry but call back when you’re sober.

It also feels strange that (for the moment at least) I have my own time, my own schedule, and I can do or not do at will. Of course I then realized I have a couple appointments and rehearsals this week so that gives the sensation of slight pressure which makes me feel somewhat anxious and constricted. I can’t just space right out or I might forget to do something I intended or promised.

But the new freedom allowed me to feel like I had the availability to start doing things that have been hanging fire for ages. Scour out and straighten the entire sink area especially that area to the right where all the tupperware and bottles for spices, yoghurt making and grain storage accumulate.
Then the task that turned out to be a blast. Getting a few, foot deep stacks of vinyl onto the shelf somehow. This involved reorganizing the whole collection. While I did that I handed out stuff for Oliver to put on the turntable. We listened to a 50’s latin dance album from my childhood (the cover in classic pink and black even). Pythagorean Theory music (one of those 70’s concept albums where it’s supposed to put you in some kind of mathematical synth trance). The original Peter Gunn soundtrack album. The soundtrack to Du-Beat-eo (Johanna Went, Tex & the Horseheads etc.) James Bond theme songs. The soundtrack from “Blood Feast” (I think it’s only kettle drum, french horn and an upright bass). A completely squidded piece of weirdness out of Long Island by Children Of The Night called “Dinner With Drac”. Mission Impossible, (old) Mitchell Froom, The Faces, Five Easy Pieces, some late 60’s garage band comp. It was total fun and makes the dining room so much more neat and open feeling as well.

OK well we’ve put Billion Dollar Babies on now and I’m going to wander away to enjoy another brilliant piece of music while I dust the living room, water the plants and do my very last bit of paperwork which will put the really, truly kibosh on this semester.
God, I, feel, so, strong, I am so strong.

1974

Best of Soul Train today is:
George McCrea - a C list soul singer with a dance hit or two.
Franklin Ajaye - wonder what ever happened to him?
Billy Preston - Whoot! (With a big ‘ol badass ‘fro entourage)
And to top it off -
Rufus. With Miss Chaka Khan lookin’ so young, so good, in a purple sequin tube top and black satin hip hugger elephant bells with roses appliquéd all over them. Singing “Tell Me Something Good”.
I remember riding the Tilt-a-Whirl at the Hillsdale County fair while that was playing over and over. Man I loved the Tilt-a-Whirl. That was the time that my Mom had to sit me down and explain genes, chromosomes and inbreeding to me because I was completely flipped out by all the mutants there. She used the House of Hanover/Windsor to illustrate her points to me. To this day I am completely freaked out by the Monarchy and obsessed with any movie that has mutants.
Happy Birthday Ma, wherever you ended up.

Kalachakra

We are in the wheel of time and time is our boon and our bane.
The action of time on our lives can allow the spaciousness to pull away, to reconnoiter, to see what develops. The issue of time is death. What do we wanna do before death? How much and how little time remains?
This is why washing the dishes with intention is important.
Everyday I go by the river three times going and three times coming and almost every one of the six times I want to get off the bus and go to the water.
Why do I never get to that water?

I love the smell of old canvas in the morning

Oooh, the cicadas are out now, to me that is the sign of serious summer. The sound is both nostalgic and foreboding. On the one hand, it causes me to instantly recall growing up in Ithaca and sleeping out in the yard in an ancient, funny smelling tent. Brownie watching, (shooting stars, if you haven’t been exposed to that particular colloquialism) and the first time I found an abandoned exoskeleton of a cicada clinging to the sticky sap of the Gaylor's massive blue spruce and being fairly freaked out by it.

Then again, it also reminds me of laying awake, drenched in sweat, not being able to sleep for hours. Or having to crawl way down into the roots of the privacy hedge and sit there with the spiders just to get some deep shade.

There is a god awful black and white polaroid of me, about age 3, bent over in a bucket of water, having stripped off my offending wet bathing suit (which I’m told was my wont). It was taken there in that yard which had been (in my view) ruthlessly re-landscaped the last time I nosed around there. I guess that's OK, I guess it has to be, the cicadas are here too.

Note: Not the exact picture I was lookin' for but damn close