Yeah. That.

Fill My Senses

Where I Am

Lovers Alone

Pull on Yer Big Girl Boots and Dance

Ruby Dee and the Snakehandlers

Natasha's Bar & Bistro

Lexington, KY

September 17, 2009

In the the dictionary under boot wearing, fringed awesome you'll find an Austin band called Ruby Dee and the Snakehandlers. Their upbeat show last night in Lexington was terrific. With Ruby's charm turned up to 11-she's as graceful with a drunken heckler as she is two stepping around the stage (she's also a nimble wordsmith "I'm yer girl/yer my feller/ I look swell/you look sweller" was a particular fave)-and Jorge's guitars (both small and large) turned up loud you really couldn't go wrong. Their country/rockabilly sound is rather like the Knitters eating chili on a field trip to Bakersfield and was instantly appealing to new and old fans alike.

Standout songs included "Red Earth, Cold Pines" with it's heartfelt story about being inspired by a roadside cross on a harrowing winter drive and an impassioned cover of "Suspicious Minds" that led to underpants tossing and a shared look at our table that could only be read as, "He's with us, Elvis is with us."

Do your ears and spirits a favor and check out Ruby and the boys-live or on disc they're good fer ya.

On a personal note, their rocking two sets at Natasha's in Lexington was a highlight of my sweetie's visit. To see his new (read truer) self reconnect with old friends, his whole body engaged in the music, to be so close to what is key to the heart of him was precious beyond just going to a show. I'm not yet fortunate enough to have my avocation and vocation be one so to bear witness to that is like grabbing a cord plugged in strong. No matter the job, it's always a kick to see someone do the work they're meant to do.

Learn Something

The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
- T.H. White

Yep, Sounds About Right

The Rarest Gift

" I decided I really am gonna be moving North. Like I always wanted. Just draw a line and go. A Northline. The further North the better...I figure the further North you go the better it'll be." -Willy Vlautin



It all started with Willy Vlautin's novel Northline.

Damn, how much of my recent life can be traced back to that book?

Well, seemingly everything. There needs to be a new word coined for that kind of impact cause that's miles beyond a seminal book, galaxies past a touchstone and light years past a lifechanger.

It was March. The date is lost to me right now (it can and will be rediscovered) but it was a Friday during Lent. My friend Carrie called to say that Willy's band, Richmond Fontaine, was playing at the Tractor Tavern that night and she was going to go and see if she couldn't thank Willy in person for his participation in my 40th birthday surprise (see "The Greatest Gift" ), for the gift of Northline, for everything. She asked what I would have her say on my behalf. I said that there weren't words enough but that Willy should be told that the book still means everything to me, I still listen to the soundtrack daily and that not a day goes by that I don't shake my Reno snowglobe and think about Allison Johnson. She also requested I send pictures of my 'Willy Wall' in my living room and of the birthday suitcase all spread out, which I did.

Some hours passed-me in a state of low grade excitement-wishing I could be there too but half glad to have a proxy, this proxy, who had marshaled the whole birthday thing in the first place. Then the phone rang, hours too early for the show to be over given the time difference. I was nervous that the next voice I would hear would be Willy's but it wasn't. It was Carrie apologizing (unnessarily so) for not being able to pull it off. She then went on to say that something else had happened that she needed to tell me about.

And then she told me to sit down.

Now the thing to know about Carrie is that, as Stephen King might write, she has a bit of the shine to her. There have been many times in out 20+ year friendship when she has known something she she had no way of knowing. Except somehow she did. And because of our history my mind is way more open to her than almost any other person. Which is good cause what she was calling to say was, "Tonight I met a guy in a bar who is going to be important to you." Which, if anybody else had said..yeah. But because it was her I replied, "Talk about it."

This is how it happened.

Carrie's husband, Thor, was skidding to the end of a spectacularly shitty day and so wasn't up for the whole rock n' roll thing but was game to go see if they couldn't catch the band at loadin or soundcheck just so Carrie could say her piece. They didn't catch them so ducked next door into Hattie's Hat to wait to try again. As they were waiting a group came in, rockabillyed to the nines. Carrie and Thor struck up a conversation with the guy closest to them (amazing what the right band namecheck will do) whose name was Harley (of course it was) hoping they were another act on the bill. They weren't, they were actually playing somewhere else but after a few minutes of chatting Carrie asked, in her never-met-a-stranger way, "Harley, do you like a good story?" and then went on to tell him all about me, the birthday surprise and their night's mission. His response? He asked, "Do you trust me to do a favor for you?" before taking my e-mail, her iPhone with the pics and heading off to the Tractor to work his contacts and try and make the meeting happen.

Now Carrie is mighty persuasive, after 20+ years no one knows that better than me, but the thought of a man I had never met, with a show of his own that night, just setting out on this errand knocked me back. It knocks me back still. Such a kind, big hearted gesture. A gesture that both amplifies and mirrors Northline, though he had never heard of it. How many people would have done the same? Not many, if any at all I think.

Harley, too, was unsuccessful but at that point this other, seperate, story took on such greater significance that I wasn't disappointed at all. Instead I was left marvelling at the world made smaller in the best possible way.




Postscript

Was Carrie right? Hell yeah, she was. I had to write and thank Harley for what he had done (of course I did) which led to a corrospondence and phone calls-lots and lots of phone calls. Finally in July we met (insert YouTube clip here) when I went to Seattle to watch Carrie's boat and child while she went to Japan to make a movie. After months of long distance I thought I knew she was right but when I saw him in the Seattle airport I really knew and when I took his hand in the car it was with the hope of never letting it go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOPb4UtUVLE

Pop Quiz

Rare Work

It's a unique relationship, that of the blogger and the reader. As a blogger myself I have often considered it from that side of the fence and outside of one nasty incident where a friend was stalked through these pages, it's mostly been a positive one for me. But these past few weeks I've been pondering the other side.


What I look for in a blog is easy. Easy in the famous pornography answer way i.e. I know it when I see it. My regular haunts include everything from birds to young adult lit to crafts to sex. I'm engaged by good writing and an interesting point of view (fabulous pics are a huge plus) but more than anything you know you're reading the right blog when you find yourself reflected back-what you would have said, something you had just been thinking-on your daily visit.


So it is with me and Nightmare Brunette.


First, there was this, right when I was seeking to capture that phenomenon with a word:


mamihlapinatapai
noun • a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.
The word is from the Yaghan language

then the quote from the above entry (repeated here cause it's just so damn good):

I wanted to stare uninterrupted and touch, not because his scars were freakish or ugly but because they were remarkable. The success of his healing was astonishing. I wanted to feel connected to it, the strength and cleverness that had gone into keeping him beautiful.right

when I came home from nursing a sick friend. Yeah, it was almost spooky but spooky in a 'we're all one' kind of way. I think it's safe to say that Nightmare Brunette has my number.

Whether it's breaking my heart with this description, a description sure to touch anyone who has acted out their own sorry version:

Again, we decided it was over. He said he couldn't bear the unhappiness and while he once saw a way to make things right, he couldn't see it anymore.
"I'm not angry," he told me.
"I'm not angry either," I said, shaking my head, tears leaking into my mouth. "But I don't know how to fix this."

or this, which echoes my own complaint about adult life:

When I was about 8 or 9, my extraordinarily wealthy best friend had a birthday party. A limo picked us and several other girls up and drove us to her grandmother’s gaudy seaside home, which had a large rose garden, a heated indoor pool, and a baffling mirrored corridor which spiraled upon itself until it came to the grandmother’s bedroom. We ate cookies, played mad libs, swam in the pool, and climbed out her window onto the roof. That’s one of the ways I find my adult life lacking—not nearly enough spontaneous taking to the sky.

And finally this, which spoke to me, to my emotional basement. Me, whose first tattoo was the Chinese character for courage-a permanant reminder that I can be brave for when the fear comes, which it does almost every day:

I thought of how different I was a year or two ago, what I dreamed then and wanted and believed about the future. I didn't say it aloud but I felt the thoughts punching my chest: I should have been braver. I should have done it alone. I made so many mistakes. How terrible it is to sit with the knowledge of the ways you've made yourself less because you were afraid.

Yes. Yes. A thousand fucking times-yes.

Nightmare Brunette. Do yourself a favor and check out her site & blog.

(Adults only please)