Mmmm. It’s been one of those, yeah, punctuated by all of the good things, only skimmed by some of the bad.

Friday I decided I wanted to go see some music to try and throw me out of the morbid plane I was sliding towards the end of last week. So I perused the paper for the best things to do and came upon a listing for another show at the Marquis on Friday evening. I saw the name of the headlining band, Eisley and listened to a few things I discovered on Youtube and decided yeah, the girls could sing. So that was about as much as I needed to venture over there. I have seen way too many bullshit metal grindcore and bad punk lately that actual singing was really all I was looking to experience.

I have been going to rock shows since I was 15–everything from hardcore to metal to ska to punk to later what was considered progressive to alternative to emocore to bands like 10,000 maniacs, the Sundays, Lisa Germano. Yeah, I’ve done the rounds as far as music is concerned and I have seen hundreds of shows over the years and can very rarely remember being captured and taken with no prior knowledge of the music. But when someone can make me want to move and dance and smile and yeah, cry, without any history or context aside from lyrics, well, I consider that a victory for me, and I guess the band as well.

I cried several times that night, the first time getting a bit overwhelmed when I was on the light rail headed over…

An older black man was sitting in front of me on the train, his dark skin peppered with three day beard and I met his eyes. “Hi” we greeted each other and when I asked how he was he said, he was tired. I told him it was hard out there to which he nodded and agreed.

He curled up the edge of his paper bag and then leaned over. I leaned my ear up to his voice and he told me this, “You wanna know what the secret is?”

Of course I do.

“People, the relationships you have. You build them, ya take care of them, you will never be alone. It’s you and them and the world. You stick together in good times and bad. You have someone, you’re alright.”

I nodded, annoyed at my own condition and inability to convince anyone else of this myself.

“I’m 58 years old…and that’s what I know. It’s people, man, that’s all ya got. Your things can just be taken from you, but people, people’s it, man.”

We rode the train a few more stops and as he got up to leave, he leaned over and whispered something in my ear.

What? I didn’t hear you, sorry.

He leans over more deliberately, points down at me, “Don’t get in too much mischief.”

Ha, no, no, Sir, I won’t…I half promised. As I watched him walk away I recognized how full circle I have come with my life, and I keep getting these damn markers pointing me in all of the same direction but it’s like…yeah, I can see and understand that I know shit right now I should have learned 30, 40 years later than I did. I was supposed to take all of you and my life for granted and then got learned, right? Yeah, that’s not what happened, so I am a fucking alien comparatively, unable to see you eye to eye and not point out the beautiful magical shit that surrounds us on all sides. I guess in some ways–I have no idea why I went through all of that shit to be honest. It’s not like I was particularly unappreciative before. But now…wow, I can have a good day if I see one puppy. Sometimes that is all I need.

Everything that has happened since has done nothing to advance me forward aside from my own energies and direction in trying to understand not only what the hell happened, but how it happened. The why can eat shit, because I am almost exhausted and sick to death of all of these lessons I continue to get.

One tarot card reader told me once in an airport on my way here with two friends over ten years ago that I had my heart broken by my mother. The question one would normally ask in this situation if you were me would be “which one?” And forgive me for being honest, but I wouldn’t even know which would would get that prize, and neither would ever get it exclusively. They both did what they did, and both have evolved for me out of the mother zone into the people zone, demystified. I know them both, I understand them in different ways, but I largely felt I had to do a lot of my own growing up not through guidance, no no. Try to tell me what to do when I don’t ask you for directions and you will see…this is how I have always been, not listening and doing what I want. My life, not yours. I owe nobody, nobody owed me, nobody owns me, and well…my time is a thousand percent mine these days.

But yeah, after I got all weepy about that conversation and started musing on the words of that old man, seemingly shot out of the dark night into a random direction, to someone who understands all too well what a man of 58 is proud to know.

The bands I saw…holy shit, is all I have to say. These guys floored me…I couldn’t help but feel everything they played. Amazing for sure:

Marksmen and here and yes, here, too. This dude can surely sing…I could only wish for such a gift.

and this girl…who opened the show. It was one of the first times I have arrived early, and stayed until the end. Of any show. She is the youngest sister of the Eisley crew…

Christie DuPree and this also by her…Apologies

Wow, is what I walked away from that show thinking–a little weepy for some of the messages in the songs I heard (and not necessarily these) that I took as signs from the cosmos…shooting me straight through the heart, thumping slowly in my head.

That night a friend of a mutual friend met me at the show at the end for the first time, a very cool new friend. He drove me home and asked me if I wanted to go for breakfast the next morning…

And so I went the next day and heard him speak of the war and some things he didn’t seem entirely too comfortable divulging at first, but I am one of those girls, I guess.

I mean, you see me peeled open out here dangling my diary in public–why would you feel intimidated to tell me anything, right?

Pretty much–I might make my own slighted judgments in my head sometimes about immediate situations, but I am not an asshole…I take all information into account before designating any type of value on someone. And that takes time or an investment.

So then after breakfast he came over and met my friend Mark, my English friend who was going to take me to the museum and then over to the festival at Civic Park. Mark is one of the few people I would consider my intellectual equal in terms of how we think of things and the capacity for us to embrace differing opinions on things. He’s someone I met off of my first big unrequited Colorado crush I mentioned here some months and months back. Oh, Jared, you ass…but–Mark is a good person and though I definitely miss the idea of being with someone I can snuggle up against and kiss every once in a while, he is a dude, and he’s not a bad one. In fact I’d suggest quite the opposite. He has been taking me to all manner of places and I have done a few things courtesy of his generosity with his time…he took me to the botanical garden, the museum…very date-like kinds of things under the pretense that no, this is not a date. It is what I get instead of a date, a date like activity without the belly flops and smirking smiles that real dates usually involve.

We hung out at my place after our jaunt to Taste of Colorado and I read him a part of my piece, “The Fowlings”…I wrote the first draft of it for Columbia two years ago now and it needs some fixing up and he thinks I should make it into a full length novel when all I wanted to do was win a contest. I trust his opinion so that was actually really great to hear. I mean, I know it’s a good story, but a whole novel? The novel is something I would consider, since I do know it definitely has wings, excuse my pun. But I need to get the contest won first.

Ohhh, contests? Contests and me? Oh man, fuck that, I will win out of the principle of the thing. I am super competitive with what I know. Art contests, writing contests? I am all about it. The other stuff I don’t know so well: Pool I largely suck at but always seem to get better drunk. Cards, cards I am excellent at because you can never tell when I am bullshitting or fucking with you. Chess? I need to learn that as I am convinced there is something inherently wrong with me in that I didn’t ever get attached to that game. The strategy involved in thinking ahead is something that is bruised and damaged in my head.

This morning my sister and I rode our bikes the 14 mile round trip jaunt to Taste of Colorado for the day…Mark had given me our unused tickets so my sister and I ventured through the fair, observing the masses. It really is amazing to have her be right there, and though she is often occupied with the business of having a husband, being a teacher and a pretty active daughter…well, let’s say she has less time than even Bab’s does, and I see her very rarely too.

There was less evidence the third day of the festival of the rasta banana. What the hell is the Rasta Banana, you ask?

I have no idea…but go look at these and let me know your thoughts…I didn’t even know what to say but what do you even do with such a thing, save for future landfills of America or what? You can’t snuggle or display a rasta banana, people. You can only hide it…and though we all know the hide the banana game, this is going a bit too far.

The idiot that came up with that idea should definitely be fired.


wtf?

they come in ALL sizes, folks