Thursday, September 30, 2010

Last Weekend

I went to Homecoming at St. John's last weekend. The class of 1980 was there for their 30th, and there was a nice wine-and-cheese reception in memory of Donald Esselborn, who we lost some years ago. The people my age seemed incredibly old, and the younger people seemed to be locked into the kind of stuff that seems like a broken record by the time you have gotten your kids through high school. The students, of course, live a blissful existence, centered around 'the nature of the good', and the schedule for the next soccer game. Everyone asked about you all, and I told them that our hearts still beat as one. The place is much less decrepit now than it was in our time.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

On the other hand..

I have some leaks. There is a leak around the bathtub upstairs somewhere that has compromised my kitchen ceiling. I have not been able to isolate it. I had another leak from the roof that seems OK but the damage has not yet been repaired. The other day, all of the transmission fluid leaked out of Jessie's car and I had to spend a lot of money to get it fixed. Today, we were trying to fix a section of the wall in the kitchen that I thought had been damaged by one of the known leaks, and I found that it was actually caused by another, very small and annoying supply line (pipe) leak. These leaks are not a lot of fun. They are quite a bit like a sticky valve on your horn, in the sense that they are something that you do not really understand why you have it, when you really don't want it at all, and when you try to change it, it is still there.

drip, drip, drip

We shall, in fact, overcome, but it is kind of leaky sometimes.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Our friend Tracy, quite a swifty
Always neat and always nifty
And today she's as old as I am

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

We were sitting around late at night in some fantastic foreign city where we were going to be giving a show the next day, drinking and getting high and thinking about how great our show was going to be. Robert Richards was there, and Jennifer Anniston. Jimmy and James went out to get some more drinks, and it was late and I was tired so I lay down for a while until they came back. And then I was sitting in a car and I couldn’t remember how I got there, but the sun was out and it was the next day, except it was actually two days later and I’d slept too long and missed the show. I started to cry, I was so upset, and Tracy was nice and gave me her coat, since I was still in my pajamas.

Monday, September 13, 2010

The Fix Is Better Than The High

I’m sitting at a café waiting for you to show
When you get here I’ll soon be bored silly I know
But now I’m excited, oh please tell me why
Is the fix always so much better than the high

I’m thinking about you, going into a frenzy
I can’t for the life of me remember what sends me
About you, my darling, so please tell why
Is the fix always so much better than the high

What is that makes me so impatient?
Some mirage of my own creation
Why am I so impossibly naïve?
Once you’re here, I’ll be ready to leave

I’m now so worked up, I’m now so upset
It seems while I’m waiting I always forget
All the times I have wanted to tell you goodbye
The fix is always so much better than the high

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Friday, September 03, 2010

After S.D. Simko


I have my directions
Written in some uncertain kind of code
I know the groves and orchards
But not the people I see on the road
I have changed my money
For the paper they use here to pay
At stores where they speak another language
Where street lamp shadows slip on the doorways

And I don’t feel like dancing
Maybe you can hold my hand tonight
No I don’t feel like dancing
All I ask is that you hold me tight
‘Cause I don’t feel like dancing
No I don’t feel like dancing any more


It is snow. It’s snowing.
Footprints running like a line of news
Or history written on lined paper:
Only insults, nothing but a bruise.
The fields here don’t quite fit
Like a map I don’t know how to fold
It’s one story. It still matters
For as long as that story’s told.

And I don’t feel like dancing
Maybe you can hold my hand tonight
No I don’t feel like dancing
All I ask is that you hold me tight
‘Cause I don’t feel like dancing
No I don’t feel like dancing any more


Even with my eyes closed
I know this place that might have been my home
The woods where trees are still scarred
With my name that’s carved in like a poem.
I barely fill my coat up
The sleeves are empty as the twilight sky
Heading to the empty
House where I last saw my father cry

And I don’t feel like dancing, &c.