Today

Today I woke up and had yogurt and cereal and coffee while Dad and Karen read the pink newspaper on the couch.
The sun rises in the East over the Cascades and the Puget Sound before it shines into the big window's in my father's house.
We've got like 5 magazine subscriptions because the airlines keep telling us if we don't get a magazine subscription they'll disappear our frequent flier miles.
I drove the old lovely red car through town and bought a Ninkasi Total Domination IPA for David. I requested 20 dollars cash back, but then forgot to get it in smaller bills. Now all I had was a 20$ in my wallet and I wanted to go to the Roasterie and get a 75 cent cup of coffee (only an 8oz since I'd already had a cup with breakfast).
But I was able to find 75 cents in change, a quarter, 3 dimes, 3 nickels and 6 pennies (there's an extra penny). When I walked into the door of this coffee saloon Camille and a dude were singing and playing songs on the guitar, banj-ele (or uka-jo?), and a drum. Everyone was so friendly and the music was so pleasant. I donated my extra penny to "Pennies for People", because that seemed appropriate.
I saw Stephen Floyd, he was off to grade 11th grade American Studies finals.
I called Annie and David and left messages.
I drove North to my old house which I had painted blood red and cedar-y green last summer. I had to paint some more cedar-y green in one spot where I had painted a different shade of green.
No one was home. Painting was easy and did not take long. Two hours. Annie called and told me where they live and that David would be around all day.
I drove South again in the old low red car, deposited my checks at the bank, and went to the Monkey Tree.
I got a savory delicious cheese and onion pastry, like a cinnamon roll, only not, and a cup of coffee. I saw Barbara Waterbury and I met her cousin from Alaska and he cousin's husband. I saw Fred Medlicott's mother. Fred just broke up with his gf in sf apparently. I saw Susan Nyman and met Joy and Chai Mann, whose house my father lives in. Susan had assured the Manns that Noah and I were not dangerous youths to have around their house.
And I saw Felix, breifly, but wasn't able to say Hello.
Of course I saw Adam and Megan and Nicole who run that great establishment. I got refills of my coffee and ate the free sample pastries on display at the counter.
And I left feeling warm and fed.

I drove the old sweet red car South, to Maury Island, just past the Maury Cottage B&B to Annie and David's house. I delivered to him a paper recommendation form for the Peace Corps because he was having endless trouble with the online version. I also delivered the beer and an addressed and stamped envelope for the recommendation.
Annie was on the phone for a long time so David and I just hung around his backyard and garage. He was scraping off some stuff he had sprayed on his car. Some shellac or something.
We talked about life and Seinfeld and cats and ants and traveling.
Eventually Annie came out and brought earl grey tea.
Before I left she showed me the oil paintings she was working on for her art opening on Friday, but that needed to be hung Monday, which was the day after tomorrow.
So I left.

I got home and read Time and the Economist. I can't read enough articles about how big a triumph health care reform is and how much the Republicans screwed up by calling it Armageddon. Everyone like to quote Frum because he's a Republican who's been criticizing Republicans. So much so that he lost his job.
And then Dad came over to the house from the Zen Center to start the taters and nips boiling for dinner and told me there were two women singing and playing harp and guitar next door in the Zen Center and that it was really nice.
So I went next door and got a mug off sweet cinnamon tea and listened to these women play and thought about music and sounds and the resonance of that room.
One woman said she saw a headline once that said "A Single Flower Bloomed Today" and it got her attention.
And I came back and we ate fish and taters and nips and salad for dinner.

Then we went to the Moisture Festival.
This is a variety show. It is very very well done. Its got a fair number of performers from the island, but this is the first year they've performed it on the Island. They left out the burlesque here so that it could be a family show. :(
I saw a duo called Lelavision. They had a five foot at the base diameter cone with a 1.5 foot opening at the top. The cone was elevated a few feet of the ground. Cello strings were attached to the outside so that they could be played. The man played this metal cone cello while the woman danced with a hoop radiating with long metal rigid wires with bells on the end. She spun this bell skirt as he played the cone cello.
Then they spun the cone cello. It spins, apparently. And they played it as it spun. And then they mounted it and played it as it spun with them on it. As they moved their weight towards the center of the spinning cone cello the speed of their spinning increased. Then they were both on top of it. Then he started to pretend to fall inside the 1.5 foot opening at the top. He fell further and further inside. Then he started playing it from within. She continued to spin and pluck the strings, but then she went inside as well and they were both playing the hollow spinning cone cello from the inside. They came out again, spinning. But then there was a way they could stand from inside the cone-cello so that they would be sometimes stationary as the cone spun around them.
They emerged, still dancing and plucking.
There were some 10 other acts of all types.

We drove home.
David and Annie had told me a character named Ian Moore was playing at the Red Bicycle tonight. I drove there in the old two door red car. There was no cover. The music was great. I saw one of the most beautiful women in the world and she sang sweet floating country songs, but I couldn't pay much attention to the songs.
And then Ian Moore and his band came up and rocked the fuck out.
And an old hippie mama I didn't know hugged me and kissed my cheek and said she used to drive these kids around after Youth Theater Project in an old Volkswagen Bus with a door that would just fall off, it was so old.

Yesterday

Yesterday I took the 56 to Sodo
I took the 23 downtown
I took the 10 to Capitol Hill
I saw the lakes, the mountains, and the trees all lit with spring light
I took the 49 to the University District
I saw a pretty girl, but she was awfully far away
I took the 71 downtown again
I went through the bus tunnel
I took the Water Taxi to my Island
I took the 119 to Ellisport
I walked across the tidal flat, to the estuary, to the road, and up the hill
to my father's house.

Saturday afternoon on an Island

It is a special thing to hold music in your hands
To feel the weight of it on your thumbs
To move the sweat slicked pads with your fingers
To give it your breath
To kiss it
To feel it in your mouth and to have the air from down in your belly come up and fill the horn
To feel the woody vibrations inside you and outside you
To have your own air carry the vibration
the longer you hold it in the deeper the sound stretches
until it gets free and fills the room and embraces you
like a funny kind of light or maybe a gentle earthquake

It is a special thing to hold music in your hands
to caress it
to bring it close to your body
to go at it until you are out of breath
from pushing through the sweet sonorous swells
from the hollowed and holed cone

There are some beautiful things. I've been struggling to feel that beauty.

The Last Cowboy - Tin Hat Trio

The Sun

In the evening when the western sky is still light yellow-gray and the clouds are darker than the sky but at some point overhead where the sky is deep indigo blue they become a light enough shade of gray that they are lighter than the sky. And the first couple stars come out and the half moon is just overhead.

Adventure

I need adventures!
I have the comfort I need.
Bacon, potatoes, onions, fried in the skillet in my own kitchen, and a pot of coffee, standing in my warm slippers, and a hot shower.
That is all the comfort that I need. Let us go out of our comforts. Let us go see something new.
I cannot always be in South America. There are new things to see here too.
I have wide eyed resolve. I have fire in my eyes and on my hands and up the back of my head and my neck. The world is 24,000 miles around. I have got two legs! And they move, independently of one another when I choose. They start at my thighs and they go and I have knees, and then more legs, and then I have feet!
Only tell me about things that excite you. You matter to me. We go out in the wide world!

Ecuador

- from 2/19/2010 -
Ya 'stoy in Ecuador.

It is good.

It is good to travel.

Thoreau said that moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. That to be awake is to be capable of a poetic or divine life.

There are other words for this. To be inspired, or enlightened, or energized. I think they all describe the same thing, and I think this feeling generally comes from a few different sources. There are an infinite number, sure, but what comes to mind for me, as things that make me feel awake, are travel, art, love, and god.

Traveling is I think the most reliable.

I'm in Ecuador now, staying with my friend Erika. I arrived two days late due to record snowfall in Dallas (so I missed my flight to Ecuador) and to carnaval (which meant there were no bus tickets when I arrived in Quito). I ended up spending unexpected days in two Latin American cities, Miami and Quito. Though it was enjoyable to see these cities, I was very tired. When I finally did arrive in Cuenca Erika and I had to adjust our carnaval plans. We took the bus to Loja the next morning. This was a 5 hour bus ride to the south through the mountains. Everything is mountians here. They just rise and rise and rise. There are no highways that run straight from one city to the next. One must ascend and descend winding mountain roads over and over again to get anywhere. It is hard to believe that a country can function with such tenuous transportation connections between its major cities.

As we rose through the mountains above Cuenca we found ourselves rising above even the clouds. To the west massive cloud banks were rolling in from the pacific, but from our andean highway it appeared that we were the more heavenly bodies. At some points fully half one's field of vision was dominated by layer upon layer of clouds dramatically lit by the evening sun. As the sun fell to that western horizon the sea of clouds approached us. Our bus raced around each corner as cloud fingers reached for us.
- continued 3/15/2010 -
The clouds never caught us though. As evening came on we descended into a drier valley. As night fell we were climbing once again, and we saw brilliant stars from the windows on the bus as we wound our way over the last mountains before arriving in Loja.

We stayed at the Hostal Londres. It was an old place. It must have been a large family house at one point. Now the various rooms of all shapes and sizes are mostly empty. Our room was on the third floor with balcony doors overlooking the street. In Latin America I've always seen these old tall, narrow doors and windows overlooking the downtown streets, and always thought how I'd like to live in an old house like that. To stay in that room statisfied some part of that craving.
It was late when we arrived however, and when we went out to find food all that was open was a small store that served hot dogs. We ate our meals and talked with the shop keeper about our plans for travelling beyond Loja.

The next morning we walked to the bus station to find a bus to Zamora, an hour and a half to the East. Zamora is in the transistion zone between the Andes and the Amazon. It's a pleasant town, small enough to feel comfortable, but large that you cannot see every part of it in a few days. The Podocarpus National Park is a 10 minute drive south of the town. We spent the next three days exploring the park. The first day we slept in and then went swimming in the river near the entrance to the park. The next day we decided to hike, and climbed all the way to the top of a jungle covered mountain, without realizing that we had reached the end of the trail and kept going. It doesn't do you any good to get to the top of a mountain if the top is also covered in jungle. You can't see anything.

That afternoon we also hiked to the "poderoso" waterfall. It was incredible, but it was getting late. Both the first two days we got a cab to the park entrance, but then hoped to hitchhike back into town. The second time however we got back too late and had to walk. We smoked pot again as we walked down the road, carved out of the side of the steep mountains, with the river Bobuscaro below. It got darker and small bluish white lights began to flicker occasionally in the shadows. As the darkness increased we realized that these were gloworms, suspending themselves from the trees with silk.
We began to approach the outskirts of town and heard a concert down below us. The whole town was celebrating in various ways for carnaval. Where the road down to the concert arena met ours, there was an empanada stand, lit by only a candle, surrounded by people. They were making and frying empanadas in a big metal bowl heated by a gas grill. We got one each. Kids were hopping in the back of a pickup truck headed for town. We hopped on as well and bit into the hot, flaky, oily, cheesy empanadas as the truck pulled away.

As we got into town we had buckets of water thrown on us and everyone in the back of the truck, because it was carnaval, and that is what they do. That night it rained hard like it never does in the Pacific Northwest. Hard, loud, joyous rain, stretching into the morning.

Out

Tomorrow I go on the road! Just a little bit. Down to Olympia. But it'll be real good to do something. Always need to be seeing new things, or old things from a new angle.

And then to Portland! Where I have a life!