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Cast of Characters

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


March 05, 2008

1:34 a.m.

Texas, Part One

Sunday, March 4
Dallas, Texas

We flew here on Thursday, in the smallest plane I�ve ever been in save one three-seater when I was in high school. It had 48 seats and I had to check my guitar at the gate. The connection was a little longer but still not enough room in the overheads for the instrument. They were very nice about gate checking it and handing it back to me both times. I remember just a few years ago it was such a big deal to try to carry a guitar on board.

Our favored airline to England is imposing a second-checked-bag fee of $25 this year. That, plus rising airfares in general, the price of gas and rental cars, makes us wonder how long we can keep flying to gigs.

We got lucky so far with lodging; for the first time we didn�t know where all we�d be staying through this tour, as one of our safe houses wasn�t as available as in the past. Our Saturday gig hosts, in Houston, agreed to have us for three nights instead of one, so that�s where we�ve been up to now. It turned out to be a jolly visit, with prolonged, animated conversations about metaphysics and microbiology. Rich is a virologist. He works on cures for cancer, among other things. His empirical mind can�t embrace something like Reiki and how that energy can possibly work. We talked long into the evenings, over red wine and homemade beer and food, listening to their two finches cheeping away, happy that there was company.

Saturday I found out I no longer fit comfortably into my favorite burgundy gig pants. I wore them last month in Florida, but now they�re not so good to sit down in. Rats! I am now on a dessert moratorium, and have been running every other day like a dedicated person. Chris and Carol are eating truffles and cookies �on my behalf,� as a mitzvah. Last night we all sat out on the beautiful poolside porch after our gig, with the aforementioned beverages, and our hostess, Bev, brought out a bag of Taro chips. I watched three of the five of us consume the entire thing, and this after numerous truffles. We had talked about the truffles; a �serving� of three of them has 17 grams of fat. Bev pointed out, and Carol agreed, that if you have fat with your sugar, you don�t get the sugar spike. �The adding of the fat slows down the absorption of the sugar,� Bev said proudly. To this I replied, �The adding of the fat slows down the losing of the FAT; that�s my problem!� Much laughter and eating of truffles (not by me).

In the past I�d have been all out of joint over this; this time I see its cyclical nature as just that. Now it�s time to start eating with more smarts and get back into my pants.

Our time in Houston was much consumed with rehearsal for the revamped kids� show, which we are doing tomorrow starting at a ghastly 8:20am. The first half-hour presentation is for pre-K and Kindergarten girls, so who knows what their attention span will even be. We�ve simplified the show to make it more music oriented. The other two presentations are for 2nd and 3rd, and then 4th and 5th graders. I hope it goes smoothly; we�re still using brief scripts, and there are a lot of transitions and props. When we arrived at the school today we spent 2 hours setting up with the wireless system they have -- and trying to get the projector to work. It�s one of those where you plug the computer into a cable coming out of a wall, but the projector is up in a booth somewhere else and works off a wireless connection to the wall panel. We couldn�t get it to work with our Macs, even after a phone call to the AV guy. Our contact, an art history teacher here, couldn�t get it to work with her PC either. Also the wall cable was so short that the computer is actually behind me, so it�s very hard for me to click from one screen to another. AV guy said he had an extension cable so that sounds okay, but we have no answer for why we couldn�t get anything to come up on the big screen. He�s coming at 7am to help us set up. It�s a little nerve wracking; without our Keynote, the show loses a lot of meaning.

I am staying in a guest room in the infirmary wing of this all-girl�s boarding school. We�ve never played at a school like this; it�s K-12, I understand. Not everyone boards but it looks like a nice place if one wanted to. It�s so beautiful, not school-like. The fine arts department, where we�re performing, is amazing. The fourth graders have their art projects on display, lining the walls and set up on tables everywhere, and they�re good. They did fired clay Storytelling figures -- these are from native American tradition, and they�re mother figures with children and animals on their knees, their heads, in their arms. Their mouths are all open like they�re speaking, nice round Os. There might be a cat near them, or a bunny, or a worm... or a papoose, or a small child doing a handstand on the mother�s head. The idea is that when the mother starts telling stories, the children come; and because the children are there, the animals come.

Anyway, my bandmates got put up in someone�s house, but they didn�t have room for three, so I�m in guest quarters. This is a spare room where they will board a student if she�s not feeling well and needs to be away from her roommate. There�s a nurse�s station down the hall. It�s a funny little room. Rather industrial -- very polished tile floor, old rickety furniture, and the strangest bed. It looks like an antique -- metal frame with just a mattress, rather high off the floor and two cranks at the foot -- I can�t tell if it raises one end or the whole thing -- but it looks like an old hospital bed. Cheery little quilt. Nurse call button at head of bed and in bathroom. The outside wall is entirely covered with shutters, to block the floor-to-ceiling windows. There is a constant white noise from the round ceiling vent (looks like a speaker), which I guess is the a/c.

Earlier, we came from the cafeteria to here via a certain route which would not take us down the upstairs hall. This is because NO BOYS are allowed in the dorm area, and Chris, of course, is the guy in the girl band. We got to the caf just after they�d closed for dinner, so we drove down the road to a really great Thai place and had wonderful curries. We�ve since repaired to our various lodgings, to rehearse singly a couple more times, and try to get to bed early enough to get up at FIVE-THIRTY, thank you very much. Whatever happened to musician�s hours?

There is a four-hour break between show 2 and show 3 tomorrow, during which we�ll find lunch somewhere. Then I have the option of taking a nap, since I�m staying on the grounds. How lovely.

********

We stopped at Starbucks on our way to Dallas today and I picked up a brochure about all the environmentally auspicious things they�re doing. I said to Carol, �We should get Starbucks to underwrite our school show.� Then we started talking about at least applying for a grant in our state. She�s done grant proposals before (and gotten at least one for herself). It surely would facilitate the show growing and getting out there. And Starbucks... charging that much for a double tall half-caf soy latte, surely they have a few bucks to put into �Turning Kids into Planet-Saving Super Heroes.�

********

After the long, exhausting day that will be tomorrow, we drive to Austin to stay with our beloved friends for a few nights. Then on Thursday I get to see my niece again, whom I met last year. This time the band will drop me at her house on their way to our hotel, and she�ll drive me the hour to the hotel later on. I get to meet my grand-niece and grand-nephew! They�re 7 and 13. I have almost never had a young person in my life -- it�s a really new experience for me. Who could have ever guessed I�d actually be excited about it?

********

I�ve been thinking a lot about soil. Gardens. Composting. There�s a section on composting in our show. I want to eat food that I grow myself, that I know is clean and loved. From the back seat of the minivan today I looked out at tilled fields and thought what a miracle it was. I want to plant seeeeeeeeeeds. I wonder if I can manage some kind of balcony flowers this year. They�re hard to keep up if I�m gone a lot. Squirrels and birds get anything remotely edible, but geraniums might work. One year I had sweet peas vining up on lengths of twine -- that was gorgeous. We hardly have any summer gigs. It�s possible...

********

I had a dream about my father last night. He was in the nursing home bed where I last saw him, when he�d broken his hip. He�d been childlike in his dementia, not very conversant, wasted and large-eyed. This is how I found him in the dream. But instead of standing in the doorway or at the foot of the bed, as I did that day years ago, I was sitting with him, loving him. I put my arms around his thin frame and hugged him tightly, and he hugged me back. It was so beautiful. I know back then I had very conflicted feelings about him; I was still angry, about his lifetime of drinking, about how unfair he�d been to mom, how nasty he�d been to his last ex-wife who then proceeded to take care of him anyway for the last couple of years of his life as he became less and less able to care for himself. Still, in this moment I wonder why I was not sitting at the edge of the bed, holding his hand, putting my arms around him and hugging him tightly. I see now so clearly: in the end, it�s not the anger that matters. The anger is bullshit. It�s the love that matters.

The anger is bullshit, folks.

********


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