Blog-azic

Sometime late in the evening (around 9 pm, I would think), Susan and I were whisked outside to the portico. As the doors were opened, our friends started a version of "Heart of Glass" dedicated to Susan. It has always been one of her favorite songs to request. We listened once through, then started singing! After that song, I grabbed a spare guitar that Troy had brought and joined in the jam. I remember calling out and singing "Move It On Over" by Hank Williams and "Way Downtown" by Doc Watson. I couldn't remember all the words to the Hank tune, by my friend, Brad, pulled them up on his phone, and I drunkenly sang them out. Susan went inside and told the DJ that he should pack up and join us on the porch. Gaelan did not have the drum set. He was banging on the cement. Girls on the fiddle. Sean squeezed a button box, and Troy held down the bass. We played and drank. I hardly remember any of the songs. Not too long ago, a friend ment...

In Hot Springs, NC remembering the wedding. I want to write down everything. Let's pick a place and start... The dinner playlist chosen by DJ Bart: Nat King Cole, "The Man and the Music," side 2 Duke Elington, "Duke Elington's Greatest Hits," side 1 Artie Shaw, "This Is Artie Shaw," side 2 Roy Eldridge, "Roy Eldridge," side 1 John Coltrane, "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman," side 1 (cut short, maybe only 1 song) All vinyl. All from our collection. Thanks, DJ Bart.

While on the drive up north to Athens (to meet with our wedding vendors), Susan and I watched the bare trees fly past us on the highway. We could see a faint red glow brushed over-top the grey and brown branches, not unlike dawn when the Sun's rays strike the underside of grey clouds tingeing them red, then orange,  and finally yellow as the angle of incidence loses its obliqueness. On the drive back home, I detected distinct oranges in the buds. I suppose that spring is dawning.

By rushing water, by water rushing, The pup and I remembered something. He the fun of rivers running. Me that spring is surely coming.

I was at Motorco in Durham for the weekly PopUp Chorus, standing at the third in a line of four old school urinals, with no privacy dividers in between, preparing to do my life's work, when in walks a fella with an busy gray mustache and a cowboy hat (ten gallons, no less), and he chooses urinal number one. As I stood there staring at a tiled wall and telling myself to relax, he starts up a conversation. "I just saw a guy wearing the funniest t-shirt," he began. "It was a note from the planet Pluto. It said, 'Hey NASA, you're Mom thought I was big enough.'" After a moment of contemplation, I laughed out loud. Literally, I lol-ed.

I left work after dark and raced to the highway, wove through traffic, sped judiciously past Greensboro, Winston Salem, turned north: Pilot Mountain to the left rising out of the blackness - somehow appearing more black than the sky. Yes, in fact, I noticed the sky was not black but deep purple, like bruised flesh - a trick from the full moon obscured behind clouds. I climbed I-77, rose above the Piedmont, and sped back into the high country before the wild hills of West Virginia appeared - black coal hills, undulating, looking down on me. I had a distinct feeling of something old - perhaps something I felt a long time ago, but since I could not name it, it slipped away. I past the time (except for a quick gas stop near Wytheville) on Mars, tracking its colonization by humans early in this century. This history was laid out in vignettes and was read aloud - the voice emanating from a tablet computer. The Martian Chronicles. I hugged the tablet close to my body (sometimes right up ...

Saturday, Benji and I walked out to the OWASA pumping station where I picked a bundle of dogbane before the first frost was able to touch it: tall crimson stalks that I lashed together and slung over my shoulder, like a quiver of arrows. USGS map, Carrboro quadrant, 1993 --- the path we walked. We walked behind the pumphouse, back, along the creek, into a sort-of breathtaking alluvial forest. I take off Benji's leash back there and he leaps through the tall grass, over the fallen trees and old fences, splashes into water puddles, and dives into privet thickets. As we go along, I count the landmarks: an excellent old paw paw stand, two deer blinds, the old river birch that seem to be planted in a row, a lone deer hoof (the rest of it's got to be around here somewhere). We walk on and on, following the creek until we get to a spot where it bends sharply northeast. Here the water level is noticeably raised (or else the land is lowered). I watch my step to avoid water f...