And I plod onward.
Or not plod. Skip. I do feel as though I’m skipping through the fields to be back here at the Farm. My coffee is lukewarm. But it tastes good, and I want to have another sip right now: so I will.
Yes. Creamy and smooth and righteous. Coffee. What else would get me to the desk to write? Or even to a rehearsal for that matter? What would drag me out of bed without it?
There’s some kind of obstruction on one of my keys. I tap it with my pinky and it sticks out, like a crumb. But I think it was a splash or smear of some kind. A little bit of food. When did that get on the computer? I’d guess last night as I was starting up episodes of Hell’s Kitchen around 11:15PM. Last night, let’s nail this down, I had a boozy kombucha around 5. Then I had a “Blue Ruin” or actually a blue kombucha (blue with naturally occurring algae) with Maker’s Mark. It was delicious. That while I was cooking. Then I had a small glass of white wine with dinner. Then I had a Descheut’s (sp?) dark beer.
Al Green just came on. A song that puts a little warmth in my hip flexers. It makes me want to move.
So I’m moving a little bit as I write: I know it’s you and me baby, that make the world go round…And my jaw is a little tense and my back is curved and a little sore. Here I am baby come and take me. The left earpiece of my headphones is tinny and thin, it might be broken. Or is that the way the music has always sounded? And my breath is up in my ribs and chest. And I couldn’t quite remember what my clock said when I began this free write so I’m trying to arbitrarily decide what minute I will end on.
Lots of thinking there. Lots of sensing. That’s okay (see the thing about my own mind is I have to include lots of little “that’s okay”s or “it’s alright my friend”s in order to not punish myself for something I’m noticing). Nevertheless, I can notice it and tell myself it’s okay and I feel like it is allowed. I am allowed. There are feelings of warmth in my chest today, rolling through me like low banks of clouds. Warm clouds. Or rather a bank of warm air rolling through the desert and up the foothills of the mountains.
Rebecca and I went walking yesterday and the fields were yellow straw. There were cows on the horizon line, and sheep, lying down in rivers of hay. I remarked that it looked like “a Bible painting.” It brought to mind the phrase that the wolf and the lamb will lie down together in the Promised Land. It felt like walking through the Promised Land.
And Rebecca and I like Hansel and Gretel trying to find our way through the woods to get to the fields. Me leading her, grinning, to dead ends and cul-de-sacs of sharp branches. Her wondering aloud when we’re going to find the right spot. Helping each other jump off posts.
And all the while, in the distance those Rocks. They stand up tall, like elephants as always, in the mist. We couldn’t see them from our place skirting the edges of the fields, but I had seen them the morning before from the bathroom window, looming in the mist. And I saw them on my run. And we saw them coming back from our run in Mom’s old Lexus.
The Lexus: blue-purple, deep wine colored. It’s been around for decades, decades. I believe she got it in 2008 or 9, I vaguely recall having it down in Los Angeles at some point to help me with a quarter at UCLA when I had to do lots of moving, and lots of props schlepping; the last quarter, it seems to me, when I was working on Henry and still going to school and still HATING MY LIFE.
The music, Jason Forrest, just got jaunty and driving.
I like it. A breakbeat. And then on comes the Flaming Lips. Summertime.
This one harkens me back all the way to the summer I’m talking about, actually probably 2010. After Midsummer. After Titus. After a rarified (that’s the word of the moment for me) period when I felt like I could harness the momentum of group creativity and drive my big wheel onto the airport tarmac and fly. What a metaphor / not metaphor(??)
But this song also reminds me of sitting in the basement at Cornelia, folding clothes and listening to this mix I was making for Jac. I wanted to find songs to comfort her; to softly deprecate myself; to express the truly mellow feeling of good will, and sadness. And I guess to tell us that both of our emotions were okay.
I made that mix but I don’t think she ever listened to it. What can you truly say to someone once you’ve broken their heart? “Hey, it goes both ways – my heart is broken too.” But who cares when you’re actively breaking theirs? Yours is a self-warranted casualty. And that’s the way it is, and that’s why you have to let them float on down the river by themself. You have to let them process – and hate you a bit, and learn to love themselves again. The same thing, incidentally, you have to do.
So. That all flowed through my head this morning.
Blue Notes 