February 19, 2004

4:52 p.m.

Sunset

One five-hour diagnostic later, there is nothing amiss with the hard drive.

Must be the operating system, then. Hm.

My brother in law has been offering to upgrade me to XP for a long time. If I have to reinstall anyway, I wonder if I shouldn't just make the leap. I-i-i-i-i'm thinking about it.

But I just wanted to celebrate my online-again-ness by making a little entry.

It's that time of late afternoon where the sun casts rosy colors on everything. I have sliders out to a balcony off my living room, and the sun sets out there over a pond (well, over a pond behind the parking lot). I'm sitting drinking chai with soymilk and digesting the glazed donut holes I ate on the way home from picking up my bass flight case this afternoon. Could have eaten twice as many; could have eaten donut holes until I looked like one. Feeling good because I vacuumed the whole apartment and washed the kitchen & bathroom floors while waiting for the diagnostic to run. Because I bought some really comfy, soft cordeuroy pants this week. Because I now have toilet paper in the apartment. Because I finally took the check that came in from my dad's estate and opened a second bank account with it, to which I can make deposits when we're on the road because its branches are found all down the eastern seaboard.

Because I sprayed my sheets with rosewater, and when I go to bed tonight, I'll have flowery dreams.

And, I found my mother's watch that I acquired when she died, and thought I'd lost a couple of months ago. I found it when I turned the sofa cushions over to rotate them. Voila! Watch!

If only I could find the really good earphone Dar got me for my cell phone recently... I'm sure I had it in Florida but it's nowhere to be found among my luggage now. I can't tell you how many things I've lost on the road. It's hard to keep all one's stuff together in so many places. It must be why I have luggage dreams.

So I contemplate what to do with the rest of my last evening home. My Indian neighbor had a little trouble with his vacuum so I said I'd go look at it, or help him find a service center. (Even that amount of human contact seems a bother -- how can I be so needy and so reclusive at the same time?)

(Ooh, the sky is going all pink around the clouds now.)

...I'll probably pack, though I don't have to leave until about 1pm tomorrow. I could watch my new fad, Mad TV, and Star Trek, and the Simpsons. I can linger over an email which a fan sent, asking about the meanings behind some songs.

This poses a small quandary. This is a guy who saw us at a gig we played in Virginia maybe a year and a half ago. I remembered him because his name was Bill and he said people called him "Coast Guard Bill," as he'd been in the coast guard. He and his wife were very nice and we all chatted for a while.

We haven't played that particular venue again yet, but C.G. Bill emailed me a few days ago asking about the story that engendered a certain song of mine. So I sent him the background, and he was very pleased and intrigued with it all. Then he asked me about another song, which is on one of my solo albums but not in the band's repertoire. It's sort of a lost love song, very poignant and deep, about a date I had once on the fourth of July. I actually wrote it about my bandmate, Carol. I was in love with her for, oh, maybe nine years or so before coming out with it in 1995, and we had a sort of brief semi-affair before she completely chickened out. No one else knew about this, except the bipolar, laterabusivewretchwithwhomIlived. He actually was the one who encouraged me to speak my piece with her, and see if there was to be something between us. (Of course, later on it became a threat that I had created, but that's the tip of a different iceburg. Don't get me started.) She'd been through a litany of horrible breakups, seemed to be sleeping with everyone in desperation, running after fools, and I'd just watched all this go by, saying nothing. But, as it turned out, I wasn't the one for her. As lost loves go, I got over it pretty well; Chris was wooing her at the time anyway, and though I didn't think then that it would last between them, it ended up being a good match. Later, after that band broke up and still later, after Ed committed suicide, and Chris and Carol got married, I left music and got outa town for a couple of years. Over time, Carol and I worked through the Lost Luggage of our past, and found a better friendship than what we'd had before. That near miss, at least, didn't linger. But I wrote a few really good songs about her during my healing process, and one of them has caught the attention of Coast Guard Bill.

So I don't know how much to tell him about it. He says, "Your imagery is so wonderful and clear that I am at the fair with you and have a good idea what 'the thing for your hair' looks like. Do you still keep in contact with her?" I could say yes and leave it at that. There's no payoff in compromising Carol's privacy. But it's such a good story, going on to be in an amazing band with this person (AND her husband!), that it's a shame not to tell the truth.

The truth could set you free... or get you in big trouble!

Perhaps it'll all have to wait for the autobiography.

The sun is down now; cloud cover moving in. It's always a little sad when suddenly the electric lights in the living room are brighter than the light outside. I don't like to see the day go. But now I feel better that I've told the story here, at least. I've always been a sucker for a good story.