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Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012
Almost Midwinter - December 14, 2011
Saturday, Noonish, Sunny - November 05, 2011
October, White - October 31, 2011
October, 2011 - October 04, 2011


November 02, 2004

12:03 a.m.

Swingin' through Ohio

Oct. 28, 2004

North Olmsted, OH

It was the week I dreamed of a full reconciliation with Ex. We walked along some sidewalk, sat on a bench, and talked for a while. I don't remember what was said, but somehow we'd agreed to meet in this place, I living and he dead, to finally connect as our real selves, without anger or judgment or bad memories clouding the peace and conciliation that is our natural state.

And then the Red Sox won the pennant during a lunar eclipse.

Our hosts here (relatives of Carol, with whom we stayed once last year) kindly let us watch the whole game even though they weren't that interested, and chose to watch some other things they'd recorded on cable earlier in the week. We felt slightly guilty ignoring them, but the pull of the game (and the moon) was too great. I'm not a constant follower of the game, but knowing something about their history, and what a dramatic one it's been, I was glad we didn't have a gig last night.

I still managed to get more or less enough sleep after, though it's usually fitful after 5:00am, especially on Prednisone. Before putting in earplugs I relaxed to the not-too-distant lull of highway traffic and, in the wee hours, a train that blew its whistle, again and again, for a very long time. Possibly a baseball fan. Or just howling at the moon.

I sent an email to my ex-ex-very eccentric boyfriend of some years ago, in Rhode Island, knowing that he always took the Sox's losses to heart and would get very depressed on their behalf. Cosmically depressed, not personally, I think, though I secretly scoffed when he'd get into such a funk over a game. But I kept thinking about him the last couple of weeks; Dar knows him too (they're both actors), and when they would lose Dar and I would say, "Oh, Mick's on top of the Prudential Tower again," or picture him running out onto the field tying the opponents' shoelaces together. Anyway, as strange and impossible as he was to be with, I felt a lot of compassion and joy for him this week and wanted to congratulate him on the big win.

********

We played a song-in-the-round gig in NYC on Tuesday which, though it didn't pay and the drive was ridiculous, was a lot of fun. A friend from high school showed up unexpectedly with his two-months girlfriend, whom he met on match.com. They're swearing it's a good service (my friend Joan is using eHarmony and liking it) but I just can't imagine.

Anyway I've just been summoned to breakfast and we'll have to leave soon for Michigan, so enough for now.

********

Saturday already, after crisscrossing Ohio and Michigan a couple of times, and on the eve of heading back to Cleveland

It's been a hard trip for me. More daily driving than usual, and not enough sleep. We played for some nice college kids last night, and I slept in a room that connected to a shared bathroom, its other user a 75-year-old priest. The whole upstairs of this "bachelor Father" establishment smelled vaguely of piss and old men. The night before I slept in a four-year-old's bed which smelled like a four year old -- I tried not to think of exactly what chemical factors that comprises. Tonight I'm in a Super 8.

We have a joke about Motel 6 -- if it's a really seedy one, you can always turn the soap around and have it say "Motel 9" and feel better. But at the Super 8, if there are hairs in the sink and crap on the rug, it's still a Super 8 no matter which way you turn it. Har. Actually this is preferable tonight, to the last couple of places I've landed; tomorrow I think we're in somebody's camper, and you remember what happened last time we ventured into one of those.

Anyway tonight's gig at the Flint Folk Music Society was fair -- the audience was so, um, Republican or something, much too well behaved and quiet, like the Friday night theatre crowd -- but we got paid a bunch. Tomorrow will be at a church, in the afternoon, for some people who know us (and are related to Carol) and, I suppose, people from the Presbyterian congregation. Should be fun and, I hope, packed.

Very tired now. I got to open the Hallowe'en package that Dar sent last week and made me take with me on this trip; it's a positively adorable little mouse statue, dressed like a wizard and with a very wise, powerful look on his face. I can see it on the dashboard of the Tardis. But for now I'm sinking fast, Captain, and it's to bed with me.

********

The best part of the tour, in many ways, is the evening after the last gig. Today's was in the late afternoon so although it felt like 10:00 when we were done, it was only 6:00. We came back to Carol's cousins' house, where we stayed that day last week, for a chili cookoff and homemade apple pie, with some other relatives who had come to the gig. It was one of those gatherings where everyone was really funny and we kept laughing at the improbable but true stories. Our hosts' son could have been an actor, he was so funny. But he designs traffic cones. He holds six patents for them and other road construction-related things. He's worked for this company for about twelve years; before that he was a musician and jewelry maker.

His wife was also very funny and engaging. She works as an office manager somewhere; she tried customer service once, because she likes talking to people; she worked as a bank teller. It was horrible, she said. Drove her back into the office. Nasty customers.

A few of the other guests left after dinner, but one couple is staying in the camper outside. I can't remember their names or how they're related to the family here, if at all, but they're from near Albany, NY. The woman has been rather drunk since we got here some three hours ago. She goes outside periodically and chain smokes for a while. She was very interested in my car and wanted to know all about it when we drove in, leaning up to it with her cigarette and peering through the windows. It took me a couple of minutes to realize she was half in the bag. I really wanted to say, "Can you not wave your cigarette around my brand new car, and while you're at it, remove it from my face?" but you just can't say things like that when you've just played a gig and made people feel all nice and opened up and altruistic. So I politely made my way inside with my luggage and she didn't bother me again until a few minutes ago when suddenly she wanted to arrange a house concert for her birthday in Albany, in December. I avoided discussing price with her, as it depends on so many things anyway, besides which I didn't know if she'd remember tomorrow that she'd even talked about it. She wanted to look at the tour schedule right away, and try to book a date. Carol was elsewhere talking to someone so it never got down to facts, but eventually she settled down and went downstairs again. We'd be happy to do a concert, of course; it's just not the best idea to book them with drunk people. "Wo-o-o-ow, you guys were gree-e-e-eat! When can you come to A-a-a-aaaaalbanyyyyyyy?"

Anyway, it's only 9:00 but it feels a lot later by now. We have the long-ass drive home tomorrow -- I want to say eight hours, maybe more -- and I'm almost finished listening to The Bean Trees (borrowed from my mates), so I hope I can locate some NPR on highway 80. That's an endless road when you're bored, and can no longer take advantage of weekend phone minutes. I should remember, in future, to get to the library before a long trip and find some more stories.

I wasn't sure where we'd be sleeping tonight, as they have three other guests, but we're in the same rooms as before, not the camper. I have a surprisingly comfortable fold-out couch -- no bar across the back -- and a spacious room, albeit an office. I'm sure we'll hear the trains tonight again. I was really grateful for the motel room last night. Privacy (and I always pronounce it with the short "i," like privvacy) is so important when you don't get a lot of it on the road. I've been trying to be kinder to my mates in small ways to counterbalance the tendency to get irritated with them in such close proximity. It's the only way to stay alive out here, to keep loving each other. But every few days I need to sleep in my own room with my own bathroom and feel my animal body relax, to stop talking. This trip was hard in that regard and also it was odd geographically. None of us got enough sleep. But tonight there will be enough sleep, and tomorrow is the last day we'll have to put up with damned road food!! When I get home I'm going straight to the grocery store and getting some damned zucchini and damned peppers and onions and maybe even some danged eggplant!

Other good things right now: my blanket came out of the cedar chest and is perfuming the whole room. Mr. Wizard (whom I have yet to name) rode on my dashboard today, to my delight. He only fell over two or three times during a sharp off ramp.

********

I had a dream that I had an enemy. We had been trying to one-up and discredit each other for a long time. In this dream I suddenly was tired of all the work it was to keep battling him. I saw that, according to him, I was the one in the wrong and the perpetrator of all the evil, so I decided to ask his forgiveness, just as if I had actually done wrong, even though I didn't see it that way. Even though I still stung from all the wrongs he had done me.

He had a wife, and the two of them were in at a banquet somewhere with a lot of people. I searched for a piece of paper to write my apology note on, and found his napkin. In gold ink I wrote, "I am sorry; please forgive me. You were right." The ink would run and I'd start over, or run out of room and write on the back. It kept not coming out right so I looked for a larger piece of paper. I was full of emotion, this pull between feeling wronged and being willing to concede everything to make peace, like it was more important than how right I thought I was. I opened the door to a room and saw all the guests seated at long tables, getting their dessert. He had made them a sort of blue cake, the bright blue of Krishna's skin in the Hindu paintings, and it was enticing and delicious. I knew that, because I was his enemy, I hadn't been invited and would not get any cake. This made me so sad, but I knew I would leave my note and just go, in case he was still angry. The point, after all, was not to ask for cake, but to create a way for peace.

It was such a peculiar dream because, on waking, I felt it wasn't natural for me to "love my enemy" so much. I wondered who or what this enemy was, who was represented. At one point I thought it was my relationship with touring, just now -- the frustration of this particular trip. I guess it could be about Ex, as was the other big dream I had last week, but it didn't feel like it was about him. And after the dream of Ex, I felt I had had a revelation or at least something to think about in my approach to forgiveness; after this one, I just felt like I wanted to argue the point.

It is true, though, that everyone in a battle feels wronged and righteous. Perhaps none of us is, after all; perhaps there are just neutral events and the meanings we ascribe to them. Perhaps, underneath, we are all friends with complete understanding, and this is just the big drama, the way we amuse ourselves, the way we show ourselves to each other, one parable at a time.

That would make a lot of things easier to bear.

********

So I'm relaxed now. It literally feels like my guts untie. I soften to the night and to the many tasks that I will face this week when I get home. For now I am fed, I am safe, I have a good place to sleep. I have one more clean pair of socks for tomorrow. Life will resume for at least a few days in my burrow, where I will hunker down with the cooling weather and finally finish unpacking boxes and creating space.

Monday, almost midnight

Back again, after almost twelve hours� drive. Slight headache but ready to go to bed, finally. I wanted to mention one other enemy dream I had last night � what�s with the theme this week, anyway? This time it was some greasy looking guy in a big public place, either a Sam�s club or a huge grocery store or maybe even a fairgrounds. We had some altercation and I think there was a fistfight, and I either wounded or killed him. He was evil and nasty. Then I ran � literally ran out of the grounds, snuck through a fence and found my bike and rode off as fast as I could. I thought they�d be looking for someone in a car, so the bike would be an advantage, but still I was afraid of getting caught. The most important thing was to leave behind what I had done, to be unaccountable for it.

So, in dream one (about Ex), we were in spirit and totally reconciled, without any animosity or even remembrance of the trauma and pain that passed between us on earth. In dream two, I took a position of utter humility in spite of feeling that I was in the right, in order to create a space for peace. In dream three, I killed the bastard and ran. What does it all mean?

And what�s next?

Sleeping in my own bed, for one thing.


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