Someone Somewhere in Summertime

I looked at the clock in the dash, 12:21, noticed the symmetry & wondered what you might be doing at that moment.  Were you tucked into your bed in Omaha?  Working the night shift in Florida?  Flickering in the light of your tv in Joplin?  Stopping for lunch while hiking through Bangkok?  Enjoying a late-night cigarette on your parents' deck in Oklahoma?
I was in the middle lane of a nearly deserted highway south of Kansas City.  Air from the window made the car smell like parched grass & dead leaves.  Red lights on a radio tower.  Listening to Simple Minds' New Gold Dream for the third or fourth time in twelve hours.  I had met BT for lunch at Genghis Khan, where I had a tasty Sugar Caramel Oolong, despite the heat.  She arrived looking lovely in a long sundress and blue beaded necklace.  Afterwards, we went to the World's Fairs exhibit at The Nelson.  It is smaller than you might expect, but when you pause to take in all the details, it quietly steals hours from your day.  Pan's head leering from the handle of a crystal wine jug, Hindu sea serpents in the armrests of a chair, an amazing Japanese screen half-covered by cold, stormy, iridescent waves of silk thread.  It was my second visit and I can't pick a favorite.
I'm convinced that highways change at night.  They hum in the dark.  Unfamiliar ramps appear under murky lights.  Cars with dark interiors take exits I don't notice until they're gone.  Sections stretch out until I start to think I'm on the wrong road.  Has that building always been there?  But I stay in the middle lane until I see my exit ahead.  I'm a Taoist driver.  Like Lao Tse Tung or Winnie the Pooh, if they had cars.

Petrograd and Me

I have been waiting for it to rain since the Fourth.  I drove home that night with Merlot stains flashing in the clouds ahead of me and I could smell it, man--water was falling somewhere.  All was calm from the car to the front door, but as I let the dog out the back a wind had picked up, blowing dirt in my face and thrashing the trees around the fence.  It was so sudden and strong, I'm afraid Joplin sprung to mind.  But then it was gone.  No damage & not a drop.  Nothing since.
Today I woke up to clouds (and my mental jukebox stuck on REM's "Bittersweet Me").  I waited all morning to hear a rumble.  When I finally ventured out to hunt down some bubble tea that I had oddly generated a craving for, the sky was a Summer diorama--swimming pool blue with shredded cotton balls gummed with paste.  Disappointing.  But I've noticed I have no problem not using the AC in the car.  My shirt gets all wet, but for as hot as it has supposedly been, it hasn't been miserable.  I've also noticed more people with their windows down, as well.
My bubble tea search took me across the river into North Lawrence with it's tiny streets named after trees, streets that are broken by train tracks, streets that end in grain silos and fields.  I believe the place I was looking for has moved downtown, but I did see a Mexican cafe I need to check out & now I know what happened to the Blue Heron.  I ended up pulling into a park I'd never seen before, bordered by a thriving community garden, and having a conversation with my friend Hot Tamale.  As we talked about Europe & cats, Wes Anderson & "failures to communicate", Porter Ricks throbbed in my speakers, a guy in a Jayhawk shirt carried his yard waste to the curb and the wind picked up.  A train hooted somewhere.
HT successfully planted an Italian bug in the dinner part of my brain, so I went to Checkers and bought stuff for bruschetta (or "bdrrrroos-kyettuh", as a certain toothy Food Network star says in my head every time I think about it).  Sadly, my garden has so far produced one cherry tomato that squirted all over my shirt.  So I love that my closest grocery store has locally-grown tomatoes and basil.  And, apparently, the stockers can be as tattooed as they want.  Now then, as I was leaving the produce section--was that a new recording for the automated vegetable spritzer or was it...thunder?  Have you ever seen a ripple go through a crowd?  Have you ever had the woman next to you yell, "Baby, just grab the small bag!  It's gonna rain!"?
And it did.  It wasn't a raging downpour but it was nice.  I love the smell of hot, wet parking lots.  I love when rain sprinkles into the car because I can't bring myself to roll the window all the way up.  I love the sound of tires on wet streets.  Swsssshhh...  At home, as I put the groceries away, Petersburg was looking at me so desperately I felt like we were living the opposite of "All Summer in a Day", so we grabbed a beer and went outside.  Ok, for me, it was Dark Side Vanilla Porter, while he munched on the fuzzy leaves of a volunteer Elm twigling.  I don't see any sign that my trashy bird bath is being utilized, but the cuttings my mom gave me from some house plants are going wild.  The grass is crunchy, the poke is droopy, the plant I thought might be a wild carrot is some kind of stick-tight.  Thunder mumbled continuously in a far-away avalanche.
This morning I was looking at a photo of Oliver's Wharf in Wapping, London, and I felt something in me twist a little.  The slant of the sun on the bricks, October outside my Ridgway windows, facing North Joplin, circa 1998.  Nodding off at the kitchen table, reading Ulysses.  Where's the doorway to that place?

el amor y la muerte

The sky was white dusted blue.  The sky was blue chalked white.  The sky was flat and cloudless.  There were fields cropped into sweet, prickly rolls.  "Reel away, reel away, straw into gold!"  Under a sky, heavy on the eyes.  Fourth of July.  Flies on your burger & hornets under the slide.  Crab apples glowing at the edge of the yard.  A flickering cul-de-sac, a salty haze.  Paper lanterns floating into the night.  And enough hugs for everyone.  Driving home through stuttering flares.  With a full moon stuck in the corner of my window.  Falling asleep reading Invisible Ink.
Today I made a bird bath, and a shrine of sorts.  I hand-scrubbed a lacquer of sickness from my kitchen floor.  I recycled in the sun, burning my knuckles on the rubber flap of the 'mixed paper' dumpster.  I found a yellow & black Wakarusa matchbook that still smelled of fireworks.  Retribution Gospel Choir dripped a coppery sap into the cracks of the day, despite the Arctic slabs on the album cover.
The house smells like clove, incense & rose, thanks to an old vial of oil named after a Goya etching.

rock & roll day of the dead

It has been a long-ass week.  With temperatures over 100 , the hours melted into each other.  June's last squares morphed into limp tongues hanging from the bottom of the calendar, and today I'm still chipping off the crust of last Monday like silica from a meteor impact.  Or milk jug plastic from a trash fire.

Maybe it started Monday when I came home to my lifeless cat lying just inside the door like she was waiting for me.  Poor Petey ran to her and licked her head and then jumped on me, as if to say, "Come on, man--use those super powers!"  Alas, I don't have access to a Lazarus Pit.  All I could do was hold her, tell her I was sorry & thank her for her company.  I knew when I took her in that the end might not be pretty.  But the vet told me that if a cat tests positive for leukemia at the shelter, they put it down right away.  So I know I at least gave her two good years--to wrestle with the dog, sleep on my head, scratch up the furniture, sit in the window.  Still, I can't help feeling like I've failed her somehow.  Death has visited my house three times since I've been here.  I hope it was the Neil Gaiman version in every case.  As I dug her grave, sweat turned dirt to mud, my palms blistered, my smartass ipod played Bauhaus.  But I also uncovered some bulbs I thought the squirrels had eaten.  Hopefully, next Spring Squeak will have some flowers sprouting at her tail.

If I'm honest, though, it probably started the previous Thursday.  Flaming Lips played two shows in Lawrence to mark the 100 year anniversary of Liberty Hall.  I was at both of them even though I had to work early the next mornings.  The day tickets went on sale I was in line with the other greying Peter Pans, sitting on the sidewalk with my Bruno Schulz book and iced Alexander from La Prima Tazza.  How pretentious does that sound?  Well, screw it, both the book & the coffee were excellent.  The guy next to me was speaking English to the girl next to him and Portuguese to his phone.  There was a guy ahead of me that I used to work with at W*lM*rt.  He was talking about Glenn Frey, and how his own wife was just young enough to not catch any of his cultural references.

Anyway, J & I had seen the Flaming Lips at Uptown Theater in Kansas City in 2007 and it was one of the funnest shows we'd ever been to.  The music seemed secondary to the vibe and spectacle, Wayne repeatedly interrupting songs to interact with the crowd.  With the confetti cannons, giant balloons, choirs of dancing Santas & aliens flanking the stage, and all the homemade accessories that seemed moments away from falling apart, I would rather call it a Happening than a concert.  They had passed out laser pointers to all of us before the show, and later Wayne held a large round mirror above his head and had us all point our lights at it, red rays refracting out all over the venue.  It was such a scrappy, genius, beautiful moment.  Until the batteries ran out, I used to get Petey and Jasmine to chase those lights around the house.

You might say the Flaming Lips have the market cornered on the whole "life & death skip through the world hand in hand so you need to laugh and love while you can" theme.  At least the zany, psychedelic version of it.  Thursday night, a giant golden woman was projected at the back of the stage, naked & dancing, with a strobing vagina.  Eventually, she sat down and some of the band emerged from a door that opened between her legs.  They managed to pack all their tricks into our small theater.  The hamster ball, the bull horn, a pair of oversized hands shooting colored lasers onto a disco ball (replacing the laser pointers).  I noticed that a streamer had caught on to a balloon and was zigging through the air like a campy cartoon spermatazoa.  At this point, I don't know if I'm still looking for catharsis.  If so, I didn't find it.  I guess grief takes it's own sweet time.  I know that both nights felt like celebrations, acknowledging joy & tragedy as life's ingredients, a wake & a party rolled into one big metaphorical doobie.  I felt like it was my duty to be there for my ghosty pals who don't have the option.  Or maybe they do.  I hope they do.