My AmieStreet Music RECcomendations in plain text

NB: this is an addendum to my first AmieStreet blog entry which I had fortuitously copied just as Amazon had taken over the site and taken down everything I had ever written. Because I had a browser open as Amazon killed the site I was lucky enough to go back and copy everything and paste it here, but I couldn't get the reviews to show up right—I tried everything. 

And when Blogger goes wrong on long pieces, it goes very, very wrong. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to ameliorate my Irish Redhead Gene Myth blog—sans losing every URL—and that piece has enough URLS to sink a ship. The more I fiddled, the worse it got. After many mishaps, I finally managed to get rid of all the hidden HTML bits–and scrub it scrupulously clean to repost here. (In case you're wondering why on earth I posted this piece.)

A note on the process of AmieStreet RECing. After a song was purchased, we were given an opportunity to recommend it. Writing against a ticking clock, and once posted, only 15 minutes to revise & edit your REC, made it a rather fast & furious art form. Very Zen. Whatever came to the surface. On your marks, get set....

Funnily enough, I actually earned 15 cents on John Riley–just as the AmieStreet site was taken over at midnight by Amazon. And of course, couldn't cash out on all my hard-earned pennies! Sorta like going to Vegas and being handed that little strip of paper instead of a real jackpot with coins clanging and bells clamoring. LOL. Read on.

Party of One

Wild Oats                     ©Maureen Hurley

During the 1980s and '90s, I used to live next door, well, a few cabins up, from many blues musicians at Celli's Cabins in Forestville, on the Russian River. The rustic cabins were originally weekend summer rentals, later they were workers' cabins. Then, they became an artist enclave. I was fortunate to have lived there for 20 years among many noted musicians.

What great impromtu BBQs we had at the cabins in various configurations: we were all living in and out of each other's pockets, er, cabins—they were so tiny, you had to go out into the driveway to change your mind. In Cabin Number One, there was Alastair Ingram, saxophonist, and flyfisher, born in Dundee, Scotland, but raised in Wisconsin. His band, Blue Moon, still rises in the sky at night, blue notes and all.

And across from Alastair, in Cabin #10, there was Sonny Lowe, Chicago-style bluesman, one fab mouth harpist (and a right good a good kisser). We always loved to boogie when Sonny Lowe and the Blenders were jammin' at Jasper O'Farrell's. 


Once dubbed the "highest jumpin' white man in the US," before an injury put an end to his hopes of breaking the world high jump record and a shot at the Olympics, that long, tall cool drink of water, AKA Max "Sonny" Lowe, who could jump 7' 2" from a standstill, picked up a harmonica and he never looked back. That man had soul. And he walked with a springboard gizmo in his shoes.

Sonny was also a shade tree mechanic adept at fixing cars. He was the only man who could keep my '81 blue Mitsubishi truck, codenamed Lazarus, running. He had the magic hands. I'd sidle on up to Sonny and say, "Come look under mah hood," ala Sonny Terry and Brownie MacGhee whenever I needed a tune-up or my carburators rebuilt. He'd laugh and say, "Yes ma'am!" and always undercharged me for the work, as I babysat his son Nathan for free. 


We were all cash-strapped. (Some things never change.) Sonny preferred Peach Schnaps to money as a tip. Said it soothed his voice. To this day, the odor of peaches reminds me of him.

Sometimes Sonny's friend Charlie Musselwhite would pull up in his white van. Charlie lived in the town of Sonoma. For a while, I was Nathan's babysitter and odd mother-figure of sorts. I loved helping to raise that kid. He brought out the child in me. We were inseparable. It was love at first sight. 


Sometimes Nathan called me "Dad" even when his own dad was standing there next to him. We'd all laugh and Sonny would look down at his feet and get all uncomfortable. He knew what the kid wanted. Nathan's mother, Cindy, who was trying to straighten herself out after a half-life of heavy partying, and drugs, wanted it too—if only for Nathan's sake. But it was not to be. I regret that life not lived.

Sonny taught me the root meaning of the blues, it took me a long time to recover from that kind of class act. Living next to Sonny fostered a lot of writing on my part—some of it was decent. Most of it, not. 


Even writing about this blogpost makes me squirmy like I was doin' sumptin' wrong. But sometimes I can't help myself. The pieces just write themselves into a corner or wander where they will down a long open road—while I'm unsuccessfully holding onto some sort of a through-thread for dear life.


Ain't nobody that can croon and play that harp and tongue those bent notes like Sonny, except maybe, Charlie Musselwhite, or Norton Buffalo (rest his soul.) Norton lived in Sonoma too, then moved up to Paradise. Then he went to the other paradise. To this day, I can't listen to the lonesome wail of an harmonica without thinking of Norton or Sonny.

On an impulse, Charlie gave Sonny his big white gig van, packed full of stuff destined for Goodwill, and that gig van doubled an extra spare bedroom for various visiting folks. We had a great time unpacking that treasure trove of a van stuffed with antique furniture, musical instruments, clothes, and two dark tabby kittens. I used to wear one of Georgina's vintage black dresses at many of my poetry readings. It brought me luck.

 Celli's Cabins                           ©Maureen Hurley

Evan Morgan lived in Cabin #2. Evan's an acoustic guitarist, ukelele and mandolin picker of New Riders of the Purple Sage fame. Evan's NRPS bandmates and many other musicians rarely came to visit... mainly because Evan was usually on the road with them. He'd come back full of stories. When Evan played bluegrass and Celtic music—whether on his Martin, mandolin or on a fiddle, he was at his finest. I couldn't get enough of that music. 

At the time, Evan was touring with Lost Highway Band (not the movie), but Forestville was his base camp. I remember the buzz going round the cabins when Evan auditioned for NRPS. I'm sure we all celebrated that night. Not that I was a NRPS fan, but I proudly displayed a NRPS sticker on my rear truck window for Evan's sake. 

We saw a whole lot less of Evan when he hooked up with a French blonde welfare mom who was the daughter of a friend of mine. With a cheshire cat smile, she devoured him from the rooster up. It ran in the family. He no sooner looked, then he loved, and when he loved, it was an all-consuming once in a lifetime kind of love. Now, Evan was right fine to look at, but he just sort of wasted away when he found out she was lip-synching band members while he was on the road.

Evan and Sonny shared Charlie Musselwhite's two cats, brother tabbys, Hucky and Mucky. Hucky—short for Huckleberry—who was more dog, than cat, was a people cat. He was smarter than his brother, he could open doors, and deduce things, but Mucky, a recluse by nature, was more interested in sucking his own balls than cozying up to folks. Neutering put a stop to that vice. Couldn't suggest that option to Evan. But it might have saved him some grief. Some things just need to play themselves out. 

Hucky decided Evan wasn't around much and one day he went out to Mirabel Road to find him (he recognized all our cars when we pulled up the driveway) but he thumbed a ride with death instead. Maybe someone drove by in a car that sounded like Evan's. Maybe Hucky was terminally lonesome. Or maybe he just committed suicide. It wasn't like him to go out onto the highway. We all mourned that cat. Mucky was devastated without his brother. It was about that time that he became more people friendly.

Former NRPS band member, Grateful Dead drummer, Micky Hart, lived across the way from us, off Mirable Road, so there were infinite musical party permutations possible on any given night. I don't recall ever meeting the NRPS guy whose death spawned this particular piece of memoir, Marmaduke, aka John Dawson, but I was pretty oblivious to names, so anything was possible. 

 The road across the way         ©Maureen Hurley

I never officially went over to Micky Hart's place across the way, I was too shy, but I did stand outside in his driveway to listen when most of the remaining Grateful Dead showed up one night to play. But it was cold standing there in the dark alone, so I went home. Alone.

Come to think of it, the Grateful Dead and NRPS connection, is probably why one member of It's a Beautiful Day, David LaFlamme of White Bird fame, was living on the River, working at the Guerneville gas pump. There's not many who can clam to have David LaFlamme—a world class violin virtuoso—pump gas into their car. His infinitely sad eyes were as blue as my VW Bug, and his hair, white blond as sunlight on the river. 


I should have just given Evan my dad's indigo blue Jaguar coupe way back then when he asked for it, when it was still running, now the carbs are frozen up and the wirings shot—but I was too unresolved and conflicted over my dad's death. Now it sits abandoned in the driveway, reduced to rust by the elements, junkyard bound in the slow lane.


Across the creek from me, ceramicist-musician Joel Bennett played salsa chord progression riffs on a not-so-baby grand piano that dominated the living room like a shiny volcano. On weekends, with artists and art lovers dropping in for Open Studio, it was like Little Havana at Joel's joint.

Italian pine   ©Maureen Hurley

In Cabin #7 there was Paul Ellis, painter and a regular Jeckyl & Hyde fiddler-classical violinist. Paul could change from classical pieces to bluegrass at the drop of a hat. Sometimes even in the middle of the same tune. He had a running classical chamber duo gig with Ron Jones and/or Don Coffin at local restaurants on Sunday afternoons, but Paul could break out into some serious barnstorming fiddling come Friday night. AKA Redwood String Trio, The Hot Frittatas, etc. (Pix of Paul & Don at the Kate Wolf Festival).

Paul painted a lovely canvas of my cabin, with all its cow skulls and art accretions, the Shasta daisies out front were in full tilt. (A pdf that mentions Paul & Kate Wolf). His friend, Don Coffin (Kate Wolf's ex-husband), who drove a vintage green caddie convertible, often came to visit. That's how I met Don, he came cruising up in this drop-dead gorgeous car and I ran out to see what all the fuss was about. 

I later realized I'd met Don years earlier when he was living in Sebastopol, so it was a reunion of sorts. Kate and Don had long since split up. I remember all of us going over to his house after a poetry reading and playing music into the wee hours, the potbelly stove belching smoke. Paul was probably there too. It was a small world.

And in the other cabins, lived various itinerant cabinmates—Cabin #4 got a real workout. George rented it for a while, then an ex-boyfriend, Jim Byrd moved some of his furniture in, but stayed with me. It mostly stood empty for ages. The last tenant was Steve DuBois, a fine drummer, who was my good buddy. Weekends, Steve played for Tommy Castro, at The Saloon in North Beach. (See Steve with The Doorslammers Johnny Nitro Salute). Sometimes I'd drive into the city to hear them play, but I was partial to Sonny's blues style. And the city was more than a long ways from Forestville.

Cabin 6                                      ©Maureen Hurley

Another shortlived cabin-mate (Cabin #6) was an official Marboro Man, Bill Dutra, who was a friend of Leonard Matlovich's, of Time Magazine fame. Ironically, Bill didn't smoke at all, but KS ravaged his beautiful sculpted face. Ironic also, that the iconic face of the manly man of the American West was a gay roving blade. 

A decorated Vietnam war veteran who served three tours of duty and awarded a Purple Heart, Leonard Matlovich made the cover of Time Magazine in 1975 when he broke cover and "came out" while serving in the Air Force. 

Come to think of it, Bill Dutra was probably plastered on the back cover of that same Time Magazine, riding a horse into the Marlboro country sunset, a filtered ciggie dangling from his lips.


Bill told me Leonard who was buried in the same row as J. Edgar Hoover—was poetic justice. His tombstone reads: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” Bill told me a funny story about "Jedgar's" penchant for cross-dressing like a girl and how the FBI had to scramble to cover it up from the press.

Steve the banjo player moved into Cabin #2 when Evan left. I can't remember his last name. Maybe Wharton? Starts with a hwa-hwa sound. But I can remember the names of all his cats. Rounder used to bring us fresh kill. Nothing quite like finding crunchy little gopher feet on your doorstep in the morning—with your bare feet, Steve playing "Cripple Creek" in the distance.

Then there's New Englander, Rob Harrison who moved into Bill's cabin (#6) after he died. Rob worked with Sonny as a counselor at halfway homes. He carried on ordinary conversation at 80 decibels. No need for a phone, you could hear Rob clear in the next county. Rob was from Woodstock. Must have been from listening to all that good music up close and personal.

The orchard                              ©Maureen Hurley

In Cabin #9 was Persian rug restorer and emphysemic storyteller George Howell, George was one of the original dharma bums who really lived a legendary life of Dharma Bums fame, having 'balled' Janis Joplin in the back seat of Jack Kerouac's car as it made that famous cross-country run in the late 1950s—I can't remember his Beat name in the book. Gary Snyder's name in the book was Japhy Ryder. 

Violet-eyed George, with the beard of a wild Armenian, who also happened to be half-Armenian, stood well over six feet, was overfond of Robitussen and speed in his youth, and so, was near toothless. He wheezed like a Wurlitzer when we washed hand woven antique Persian rugs—worth more than all our collective incomes—in the orchard. Wildness ran in the family. In Hana, stories still circulate about George's Welsh haole uncle, Dr. Howell who had a thirst as prodigious as that of Dylan Thomas. When I was in Hana, Dr. Howell was fondly remembered. 

I dragged a few musicians home from time to time. After a private party at The Top of the Mark in SF—I was a flower girl in medieval costume heralding the way for Scottish bagpiper, Peter Kapp—we held a moonlit ceili right in the driveway, with Peter piping and skirling and everyone dancing up and down the driveway until we were breathless and covered in dust.

Then there was the Love Choir's unstrung guitar hero Trygve Tryggestad, an old high school flame who could play the guitar like he was at the crossroads with the devil himself. But he had a regular woman stashed somewhere in the woodwork, I wasn't into playing second fiddle—and that was that. Another life I regret not having lived.

 River Road, flood                     ©Maureen Hurley

On hot summer nights, the crickets seethed, a chorus of mosquitoes hummed in unison, liquor freely flowed, two kinds of smoke rose, and George made a wicked raita & a baba ghanoosh to die for. Ah, yes, those were the days...in Celli's Cabins, in Forestville, by the river, the wild moon rising over the orchard. 

There was not much need to go into town to hear live music. We had it all at Celli's Cabins. Except for when Sonny and the boys were blending tasty treats up at Jasper O'Farrell's Pub. Besides, the dance floor at Jasper's was better than groovin' alone in the gravel driveway as the boys were all playing music. 


Party of one? 


I had to leave Forestville in order to get a life. But I miss those good old days, never realizing how good we really had it. We all moved on, got married, shacked up, settled down. End of an era.

Sometimes, I still dream of Sonny crooning the classic, Yes Miss Bessie, You Sure Got a Good BBQ! in a smoky voice that planted the blues deep down into my soul. And I wonder about Nathan, of course, that almost-child of mine by mutual adoption. Did he grow up to be a musician following his daddy's footprints? Or did he become an artist like me? This child I never had.

Forestville                                ©Maureen Hurley

When I began this piece, there was nothing on the internet about Bill Dutra as the Marlboro Man, but a cousin forwarded this link for The Marlboro Cowboy, March 2009.

Writing the Arc

My neighbor, Sonny is adrift in a hostile sea. I've not been to bed this night, I heard him come home long after the bars have closed. He's probably sipping peach schnapps from the bottle. He may be one of the best mouth harp musicians around, but the blues have got him in a headlock, and the only way out is down and out.

I had hardly graced the covers the night before, but sleep Insists upon its due. But I resist, wanting the fullest experience I can muster. I write long past the midnight oil hour.

And I rejoice in the fact that the words come unbidden – after so long, a silence, my art was weighing me down. The piece is finally done, but I worked on it some more, and I'm pleased with much of it.

It's an odd admixture of science, the flood, and the personal essay (love gone wrong), in the form of short prose poems: Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year. Every time I think I'm done with it, it comes back and insists upon another piece. Its had me in a headlock for six months, now.

I turned in a previous iteration of the manuscript to Jane Love for the Copperfield's Literary Magazine, along with some india ink artwork. This is the first official letting go, turning the manuscript loose. It's also the beginning of healing. I do feel vindicated, and relieved to receive the gift of such a powerful piece of writing—that came from a relationship that went so terribly wrong.

They say writing is the best revenge, indeed. Maybe writing the Arc saved me. But I miss Nathan, Sonny's young son. We healed each other, and the broken father was jealous of our uncomplicated love.

June 13, 1996

All the Goldeneyed Birds

Yesterday Nathan and I went to see Goldeneye, the latest James Bond movie with Pierce Brosnan. He was certainly handsome, but I didn't laugh as much as I did in the old Sean Connery 007 films. The entendres were well delivered. You could see them coming, the bad girl was thoroughly bad, the Russian focus was fun—especially St. Petersburg, but having lived there, I was distracted by familiar sites, places that I had walked daily. The plaza where the blackbirds, with their golden eyes, trapped suns, strutted and cooed. I had a pang of homesickness when I saw the airport, where Valera had greeted me with carnations. A pang, because I fell out of love with him, and couldn't ever get back to that place within me. And now it seems that Sonny and I are heading towards a truce, but to what end? All the golden-eyed birds in the bottom of a shot-glass.

exes

It was good to see Jim and Nancy. They seem to have healed the rift between them, and all was as it was last year before he left her. He left on the blood red road, only to find it led right back to her door. Family. Roots. In his own backyard. 

I was relieved when Nancy was cordial to me, she didn't seem to harbor hostility for she was angry that he came and stayed with me. If only for a short time. Was I to throw him out in order to offer sisterly solidarity? I, who knew him first? I didn't think so. 

I never wanted to live with him, I found his wandering eye drove me crazy. And I felt jealous and I didn't like feeling jealous, so I was done with that. True, he was a loose cannon, but when a man is with me, I expect him to be with me, not just take up physical space. 

But then I pushed him away because I didn't want him. The second man to return to my arms like a boomerang, and I didn't want him for the second time round.

Men whom I have loved but rejected. At least Jim has remained a friend for over 10 years later as does Lee Perron. The others I hear from infrequently: Edwin Drummond, Geoff Davis, who else? 

Who were the man in my life who mattered, who continued in some kind of relationship after the relationship was over? John, Oleg, Jim, Lee. 

Oleg wasn't quite in the same category as John or Lee and Jim, Geoff and Edwin were one to two-year relationships not as deeply felt as my relationships with John and Lee. 

Vince is somewhere in that list too but I never loved him with the same intensity as Lee or John. Where does Bob fit in? Seven years of my life I spent with him and he's not even in the first arcana of men because he so thoroughly disappeared? Did I love him in the way that I loved Lee? Bob is elsewhere on this list.

Where do all the almost lovers fit into this list? There's Jan and Sonny, all that unrequited love at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons, etc. 

I know Jan Bogaerts loved me, at least he was able to admit it. But he fled because something was not quite right in the packaging, but I think it had more to do with his fear of having a real lover, the whole kit and caboodle. 

And I could not chase him. There were two continents and an ocean in the way. I did not believe in throwing everything away for him to be. Besides he had a wild streak of something I did not, and could not ever trust. That place would wound me beyond belief, and after John, no man will ever be given that opportunity to eviscerate me thusly again.

I still think of Vince not so much in Amsterdam, but in Antwerp and Eindhoven, and in Brussels, there was a stripping away of the fear and we were closer together, and we were truly naked before each other. And where did that go? 

I couldn't take Vince's craziness, nor Jan's for that matter. Vince's craziness was scary, something to do with him always manipulating the past to fit the present argument, and I hadn't the tools to survive that. On some level I guess we're all crazy, it comes with the territory. A line I wrote somewhere I'm sure, but it is a matter of what we can live with, can cope with.

Of all the men who have loved and left me, but I have left a few as well. Vince, Oleg, Valera practically at the altar, Edwin, the last two, I left before it got any more riddled with intrigue. 

In a sense, I left Bob by falling in love with Lee, and I was sleeping with him and pregnant, when Bob threw me out, and he never knew. John and Jim and Geoff truly left me in the lurch. John, so much so, I still haven't recovered. 

I harbor this picture of myself as being the one who always gets left behind, but it's simply not true. I'm not always decisively cut and dry. Other circumstances intervene. Oleg left for the Ukraine, but I had long since ceased loving him months before. He became intolerable, it was a love based upon regret for what will never be. He had unfinished business with his wife.

And then there's Sonny, and I don't know where to place him on this particular scheme of things. Certainly I've loved him long enough from afar up close but that must be the most intimate I've ever been with him was a late night steaming kissing scene.

Jan and I fooled around but I wouldn't fuck him though he drag me on top of him several times, we were doing our fair share of rolling around. But I was so afraid of AIDS and of his attraction to the homosexual world, I couldn't, I would not fuck him. 

And right now Pat's fucking Sonny while George and I talk about his cock outside on the porch. I had to come over to George's to borrow some sugar ironically. George relates the scariest moment was when had an oral encounter with a girl eating licorice. That was truly alarming I thought this at the very least what I was bruised.

I told him about the Karma Sutra, how men wrapped their cocks and stinging nettles to make them bigger, and slept on cots with holes in them.

We giggle like schoolgirls when he tells me about the time he fell asleep in the sun and thought he had leprosy when the skin sloughed off. We giggled and I said, Well, George, I'd love to talk about your penis some more, but I'm cold and I'm going home. 

I'm sure Pat overheard most of our ribald conversation as she had open the windows and the blinds. Just the sound of our voices drives her crazy, let alone, my my presence, and I do make my presence known here, as I live here. She is not going to drive me away from my home. 

As for Sonny I think he's waited too long, and the rifts cannot be breached nor healed but then his modus operandi is avoidance. I thought of writing another letter but I'm losing attachment.

Does he plan to avoid me the rest of his life, does she lead him around by a ring in his nose, or in his cock, to the extent that he has no life beyond her specific needs? 

As if to blame me for his need to trust me, or to open up about other women, or to cry on my shoulder, then dismiss it with a third word manipulation. A word that couches the action and explains, intellectualizes it, thus removing it from its primary emotion, invalidating everything.

Last night I dreamed

Last night I dreamed a lot. I can't remember much of my dreams but Sonny was definitely busy in my dreams doing God knows what.

I dreamed of a new house by the sea, and women I didn't know, moving in with me. Another dream where David Om committed suicide. I was devastated. It made me feel so upset I called him up, anxiety ridden, and he was fine.

Yesterday afternoon Sonny came over to Steve's cabin while we were watching Northern Exposure—Joel and Maggie finally become lovers. I was lying on the bed hiding my face in the crook of my arm, which was a mistake. I should have made eye contact, and now it's too late.

I left a large note of apology on the floor, when he was away at the store. Did I mention how the other night Sonny held up my letter saying, It's a novel? I've been reduced to fiction?

He stood at the door a couple of minutes. I assume he had softened. I was wrong. There was that thin wire in his voice as he paced Steve's cabin, like a bull, holding the bottle of apricot brandy, still in its bag. The full Moon in Taurus on Monday had me in charge, I had in my arsenal, the duality of Gemini, the twins, Scorpio's sting, and Sagittarius's arrow. We are crazed extremist overreacting, this time, gambling and always losing. Another bet for the house.

I had to flush Sonny out, find his limits, and see where he would break. I needed to find the shape of his anger, and to see how he would use it. I'm disappointed. 

Mind you, he hasn't told me a thing, just a brief message via Nathan. I hate it when he uses his son as the messenger, too cowardly to face me. Let's see how much he'll actually act out, understanding he's an extremist. Prepare for the worse, prepare to do a face-to-face.

Geraldine Gower says it's his dark side surfacing, his lowest common denominator. I called Pat, his girlfriend, a toxic waste site, and Geraldine said that's his lowest equivalent. She says I'm his higher power, but he chooses the negative side.

Last night, under cover of darkness, he returned the microwave to my bench, I heard rustling, and looked out the window, but could see nothing.

Nathan pulls me aside to tell me that he can no longer come to my art class, he can't come and visit me anymore, and I tell him the ban isn't permanent. As for the rest, Sonny will have to do some growing up. Nathan is devastated, and I'm armored. I was expecting retaliation, but I didn't think he'd actually do it. I gambled and lost big time.

Housesitting the Heart

Yesterday I left Marsha Connell's place, homesick, no real reason to stay there, other than to feed the cats and collect the mail. I had to fight with myself all day long just to stay there, which I managed to do until about 4 PM, then the blues settled in, and I was crying for my mother, for it's been a year since she died.

I was happy to be on my home own doorstep, sitting amid the scattered rose petals, weeping, when Steve duBois came by, and invited me over for some beer and pot. We watched reruns of Northern Exposure and giggled over nothing and everything.

I confessed to Steve that my strength and self-reliance was a front. I'm very fragile, and lately the facets of being responsible have weighed too heavily upon me. I just can't do it anymore, I said, and added something about feeling out from under Sonny after my last letter, thinking of it was pretty final, when Steve pipes up, That's not what Sonny said.  Shit!

Steve said: The other day he seem to think you had a relationship after all. He didn't know what kind it was or where it was going, but he acknowledged it. And he began talking about it before he had some brandy, and he talked some more after having some brandy. He admitted he had a hard time opening up. 

That's what made me perk up and take notice. It was before the alcohol. So it all really is on a positive note and I was blown away. Here I had gambled and lost all, only to discover my observations weren't accurate. Of course Sonny said nothing to me. Thank God for the intervention of friends. Frickin' Peyton Place.

I didn't even care when a couple of hours later Sonny came home, I could hear her voice. He came over to Steve's to check up on Nathan who was snuggled up into me. And I was smelling his hair, snuffling like a mother dog or a horse those family pheromones uniting us. 

We ordered pizza, Alastair Ingram came over and we all watched The Gods Must Be Crazy. Sonny and Pat went over to the Hacienda to her brother's place to get something. Nathan didn't want to go and snuggled back into my arms. I stared at the TV, not wanting to be a part of this action anymore, knowing Pat was here. 

He didn't know that I knew what was up, of course, and I was curious to see what he would do. Knowing that his kid would Velcro himself onto me, here I was again watching him while Sonny was out with Pat, a sticky situation.

Steve said Nathan could stay, so to technically I wasn't watching the kid, but I needed him in my arms. Solace. I would've loved to have Sunny hold me too, but it was a little too crowded, a little too loaded, but if I had asked, I believe he would've done it. Even with Pat being there. There was something different in the air. And I didn't know what, perhaps, hope. 

Both times when Sonny came over, he was trying to pay attention to all of us equally, but there was certainly a charged aura between us. It's like we could almost see each other better by not looking directly at each other, by using the other senses. I know I must've shone like a lantern when he walked in the door. He wasn't expecting to see me there. But as he entered, he must've had some forewarning, perhaps my laughter drifted out into the night. But he had his poker face on. All bets were off.

Celli Cabin Cat Chronicles

In a united furry front, the cats made a steady parade of dramatic and entrances and exits in ans out of our cabin doors. Alastair's cat Angus, was renamed Ankles, Anguish and Anxiety. Evan's cat Hucky (Huckleberry) had other plans for the evening. He was the most doglike of the litter, and followed Evan everywhere. (Evan's girlfriend Heather Granahan brought over a box of kittens and nearly everyone at the cabins adopted one—except me.)

Nathan and Sonny's cat, Mucky yowled for attention in his scaredy-cat way. A timid one. And I cuddled him to sleep. Steve says, It must be you, he he never comes into my cabin on his own accord. Mucky never much for cuddling, made his escape.

It took Mucky a few tries to get the hang of opening Steve's screen door. At first, he was too timid and too slow and the screen door kept slamming on his head. Finally he gave it a big push and manage to shoulder his way through the door, but got a little too nonchalant towards the end, too slothful, and the door slammed on his tail. Startled, he took off, having blown his cool cat exit.

Mucky nags me some more, he wants me to go over to my house and pet him by the food bowl, he doesn't want food, my door's been open all evening. He wants the ritual of being patted and fondled in his special space. Eventually I indulge his little furry whims while on a beer run to my house.

Steve said Sonny was supposed to be back soon, but it was hours later, and the necessity to drink beer and to get stoned was an order, so we partied on into the night. At one point, Nathan wanted to watch a new program on TV, and went to my house, but like Mucky the cat, he also wanted to be petted in his own special spot, which happens to be my spot on the bed.

So we went back to Steve's cabin next door for pizza and returned to my cabin until Sonny came home. He called in around midnight, and I was asleep. Nathan nearly so. We were watching Raising Arizona. Mucky was quite pleased to have both of us in the same place at the same time, and acted silly, flopping all over, ecstatically wiggling his whiskers to be scratched and all those secret little places.

I tell Nathan Mucky prefers it when we're all together especially at his house, then wonder am I anthropomorphizing this too much? No. Mucky comes unglued if I'm at Sonny's with Nathan on the couch bed—definitely his idea of the cat's pajamas.

Meanwhile Anguish is chewing on Nathan's dogtags. A cat eating dog tags? Woof? We give him some pizza and he's in hog heaven. It's only a tiny scrap of pizza but he is ever so grateful that it requires a full body bath before retiring for the evening.

I take notes from these little fur godlets, they give me metaphors to live by, parallel structure. I wasn't forceful enough with Sonny, so he kept slamming the door in my face. I did a good shoulder shove and the door opened, letting me in. But if I linger I'll get my tail caught in the door.

Then there's poor timid Moppet who wants to please everyone, but psychically follows the energy. Whenever important stacks of paper I am working on, becomes her new nesting spot. Even the laptop isn't exempt from her radar scanning. Maybe she's just a heatseeking cat, but the papers don't generate heat unless the words combust on the page.

Once I yelled at her for sitting on the self-portraits from Windsor High School that were on the chair. I want her to sit on the chair, not on my desk. Now, that she's finally gotten the idea of place, not things, it's no longer okay. Each time she's on the chair, when she sees me, she scurries off. And I feel so bad. Sometimes I'm able to intercept and cuddle her so it's not such a big deal. Place, not things, is her reality.

I begin to think of what Sonny and I are going through is of a similar mistranslation. Action/reaction but to the wrong things. Place oriented versus object oriented. Place becomes conceptual. Objects become a list of examples. He sums things up in generalities, sweeping the chair and the table slate clean. Offering me estimation.

While I need to see all the stuff that was stacked on the chair, or on the plate. in order to understand the concept. The place above the chair is a conceptual space, potential. It is potentially could harbor a body which leads to the heart and to the head via the genitals.

The chair becomes an extension of my own overcrowded table that doubles as a desk, storage space, etc., which upsets the cats, they know chairs are their turf. I fill the chairs with stuff so no human or cat can occupy that space. Chair equals an intent to eat, intent to talk, intent to study. Activity takes place there.

I need to open myself and my living space up to the possibility that's why we exist to fulfill our human potential, not to hide behind our own misery. Yes, I've told a man that his very presence gave me courage to go on, and for once, he's not slamming the door in my face.

Inverness Fire

Yesterday I spent quite some time working on my obsessively long prose poem to my neighbor, Sonny Lowe, Obsession, after I returned from the Mendocino Woodlands. Like the Inverness fire, it's growing by leaps and bounds and shows no sign of ending.

I haven't had a chance to write in my journal since I came back from the Mendocino Woodlands. I came home to the big Inverness fire and to O.J. Simpson's acquittal. There was little news to be had in the deep woods, but on Tuesday we did get the news of O.J. Simpson. The woods couldn't filter that injustice out, it was so atrocious. 

Meanwhile 12,000 acres of Bishop Pine went up in smoke as the Pope gave mass in the pouring New Jersey rain, drenched believers filling the football field.

Last night I went to a party with Verona Seiter and Herman Berlandt at Zoravia Bettoil's flat in Pacific Heights, she is a Brazilian artist. Full moon over the San Francisco Bay took our breath away. A magical night.

We danced the samba, the lambada, with the Latin American ex-pats. Zoravia said I can move my hips like no other. I am flattered. I guess. She said that she thought that she could gyrate and flick her pelvis, until she saw me in action. She said every man's eyes were glued to my hips. I was wearing the ruffled tea dress from my 25th high school reunion, which helped. The Brazilian Consul wanted more than just a dance in the moonlight.

That complement coming from a Brazilian from São Paulo is a compliment indeed, but then I had reason to move like that. The more I hurt inside, the harder I danced, rejected by my neighbor Sonny and his latest skank, Pat. Because of them I am somewhat homeless, she is now living with him, invading my space with her negative energy. I can't be at my home anymore. This is why I danced so hard.

Herman and I snuck off to Bolinas on Sunday. And I tried to find out if my friends were burned out. At the American Red Cross in Point Reyes, I find Stephen Torre's name on the roster. The fire left his house standing, miraculously, since it stands atop Drakeview Estates Road, at the ridgeline. His neighbor, Van Morrison, lost everything. His place burned to the ground. Even the gold and platinum records. Bob Hamilton and I once almost bought the lot next to Van's place but there was no water.

Steve's house was listed as habitable but he did not show up for the Russian River Writers' Guild Monday night reading, nor did Kathy Evans. Oh well. I called her to see why she didn't show up for her reading, and she's having a hit histamine reaction to the world, and to the smoke. I give her the allergic saga, how works the immune system.

Meanwhile, Steve is in British Columbia thinking he has no home. I tell her it's still standing. Kathy can't believe it. Stress levels threaten to undo us all. No way to reach Steve.

Anyway, to catch up on things, last Sunday afternoon, Herman and I hiked from RCA Beach to Palomarin Beach. There were very few people on the trail. We didn't realize we had hiked so far north. 

Behind the roped off area, was the fire zone. The park rangers were quite surprised to see us, saying we'd hike to a fair distance. The park is closed as the trees are still sizzling. And looters have invaded, making their mark. There are cops everywhere. The rangers rifle, a symbol for martial law.

We can't see the fire, but my voice begins to hurt by nightfall. We hiked up one creek to a waterfall. Herman, for all his 72 years, is surprisingly agile. He continues to remind me of my grandmother. How odd. How we used to go on long hikes and adventures without any real preplanning. They just happen. 

Herman too likes this spontaneous approach to dailiness, we are invincible. We spend Sunday night in his cabin on the Mesa. A nice dinner of salmon and couscous. I always take it upon myself to cook most meals, treating Herman. I suspect Verona does the same, but I like to cook for him. Maybe it's the female thing. He purchases most of the food and does the dishes, so it's a decent exchange. 

I've been managing to keep away from home because of Sonny. Which means my life is changing. I don't have my home anchor anymore. Sonny's son Nathan hardly ever visits anymore and wonders why I'm never home. I explain, it's not forever. Yesterday Nathan's mother, Cindy, came to get him, leaving Sonny and Pat alone, and I growl. 

I've taken to flipping him off whenever they drive by. Safe within the walls of my tiny cabin, I'm living between two places—my cabin, and my truck, my bags are always packed. Bolinas is my refuge, it's becoming my new home, and I am on fire, raging against betrayal, and the injustice of it all.

Babysitting on the Equinox

To my surprise, I spent the night at Sonny's—I went out with Marsha Connell, and when I got home I called Nathan to check in on him, who was being babysat by a friend of Sonny's. But a half hour later, Nathan called me to pick him up, and bring him home. We snuggled on the couch talking about random stuff and then we fell asleep.

Sunny came home from a gig after 3 AM, and muttered something about us sleeping with the light on, douses the light and crawls into Nathan's bed. Almost like old times. 

I haven't been in Sonny's cabin since mid July, and I said I wouldn't visit, unless things improved. Not that they have. But the heart is ever hopeful. I drew my line in the sand. And stood behind it. Nearly 2 months now I've managed to keep my distance. 

Sonny fixes me coffee in the morning, talks about how he ran into another of Cindy's strange friends. He says she systematically burns them all one by one until they kick her out. soon she'll have no place to go to. He told her she couldn't stay in his house anymore. 

He said, If I thought it could do some good to improve her situation I would wouldn't mind, but it doesn't. 

Poor Nathan witnessing this: his mother's degradation, her falling apart. His story is so much like mine. Addictive parents. My heart aches for him. No wonder we cling to each other like burrs. I know our deep connection makes Sonny jealous. I'm his father, he says. As if that could take the place of mother complex. 

Equinox 23 September

Mother Substitute

Nathan asked me asks me to babysit him tonight, I'm startled, and mumbled yes, of course. But then I remembered I had to emcee at Barnes & Noble, so he joins me.

Sonny goes off to practice at 6 PM p.m. and we snuggle in. It's been weeks since we've spooned. Sweet little boy kisses me on the cheek. Nathan tells me Sonny and Pat aren't seeing each other anymore. This part I had already figured out.

I wanted to ask Nathan, did they fight before or after our talk, but I didn't. it seems like their fight came after our big blow-up. He describes a huge phone fight. So I'm still a wrench in the works, good. But I'm not going to ask Nathan any questions. Too inappropriate for words. Nathan should not be a part of this messy adult affair.

Nathan is ever hopeful. Against all odds, he is busy orchestrating his own parent trap, as it were. The heart wants what it wants. A boy wanting a mother substitute. I get that. Story of my life too.

9/21/1995

Montana Journal: Helena

Journal Entry: Sept. 8, 1995

Helena, Montana. I arrived last night, near 11 PM. It's drizzling still this morning. my wasp sting's finally gone down ,but the itch is driving me mad. l swig lots of Benadryl to keep the swelling down. It's the length of my forearm and is still feverish.

I'm feeling pretty melancholic and am lonely for a mate. In Utah I looked in the mirror and I saw a pretty woman who's beginning to show her age a bit, and I wondered if things were ever going to improve, or am I destined to be alone like this forever. I feel pretty cut off from Sonny and it's certainly deliberate on my part. 

Wednesday afternoon I returned from Bolinas and Sonny came up for a few minutes. I was in an extremely bad mood due to my wasp sting. I don't want him near me when his ex-girlfriend's here. Obviously I'm not taking this reunion well—especially since I know the pattern. In the morning he comes to chat and tells me he wants to reckon up. He still owes me for babysitting but has to pick up his paycheck.

I didn't bother to tell him I'll be gone by afternoon. In fact, I went to the airport to two hours early. How is that for avoidance? Nathan said he wanted to go to Bolinas with me, but his mom kept him until Sunday. I didn't know if Sonny bothered to invite them or not.

My feelings were pretty hurt by Sonny's coldness on the phone. I feel trapped before. I keep thinking what could be more erotic than helping Sonny to raise his son?

I sing, treat me like a friend, treat me like a lover, don't keep treating me the way you do. A song fragment comes unbidden as I'm driving to the airport 

Two and a half hours at Oakland, and then I'll be in Utah. 

At the Montana arts Council meeting, waiting for it to begin. Everyone knows each other, except me, so it makes it difficult to make contact. people come up to me and introduce themselves, but I'm awkward and shy.

I have insomnia  xxxx (garbled text) Will I be able to sleep?

One artist I'm rooming with, Claire, says: I used to call my husband Shotsy now I just want to shoot him. I laugh. I was concerned because several of us had been assigned to this room and I came back only to find two strange men in our room. We seem to be triple booked in Room 310. Party on!

We giggled and comment on how progressive the Montana Arts Council is. But five people in a twin-bed room might be pushing it. Is is the Arts Council trying to save money, or just taking introductions a step further?

There's a whole gaggle of us trying to figure out the keys. The woman at the front desk gave them our keys. It really was funny. I keep laughing about it as I try to fall asleep.

9/8/1995

• Montana Journal, returning home
• Montana Journal: Helena
• Montana Journal: flying over Mount Diablo enroute 

Bolinas Journal: Labor Day Weekend

Journal Entry: September 1, 1995 Bolinas

Last night, over for wine, I read some new work to Herman Berlandt who said I have a very distinctive voice and style. He notes the image, voice, language, emotion, intellect, philosophy, social theology, even political, the layers I try to include.

Yesterday on my way to Bolinas, I stopped off at Point Reyes, at the vet's office to see if I could get a prescription for Panalog, and worm medicine from Dr. Fisher. I'd written a note explaining how I had lanced and treated the cat's leg wound, having massaged the puss out from between the muscles. I irrigated it three times a day with HCl. I kept wanting to write it in shorthand but I can't remember the periodic table formula and confuse it with the formula for bleach.

So I knocked on the door though it was 6 PM. A cleaning woman answered, and I handed her the note for Dr. Fisher. Then I said disbelievingly, Debbie? She looked dumb was about to close the door on me, then changed her mind, saying she had changed her name.

She said she was known these days as Nina. Now she had to explain to the two younger women who this Debbie was, yes. And she nearly tried to shut the door on my foot and the past as well.

Debbie Howard, who was a friend from my childhood, and I talk about old home week. We gossip for a good two hours. She and Sarah live in Inverness. Their brother Guy lives in the city and has two kids. One's going to Harvard like his grandfather, ken, and their little sister, Jennifer, too has a couple of kids.

When I got to Bolinas I told Patrick Flynn the stories, and he wondered what the moon was in. We seem to have all these crazy meet-ups while the moon is in Sagittarius according to the Bolinas Hearsay News

My horror-scope reports an adventurous road trip was about to happen, and so it did. All the way to Bolinas. Yes, I'm feeling lighter, Jupiter is the planetary ruler of Sagittarius. Gemini and the moon squares that Virgo symbolic fire. We walk down to the Bolinas Library and dance to grunge music until the cows come home, I can barely make it back up to the top of the Mesa.

_______

With powdered lime I purify the outhouse, dusting it white, the piles of shit slowly climbing towards the toilet lid. Herman says lime is the secret, but the stench greets us anyway. I admire that ongoing whitewashed sculpture.

There's something to be said how we daily contribute our communion. There is beauty even in shit, the layered rosettes of toilet paper bloom against mountains of dung, and the sun warms our legs as we sit and survey the garden of what we will later eat. The bowels letting go of the burden of our eating existence.

Verona goes over her lines as Eleanor of Aquitaine. I listened to her pain, the irony, he who imprisoned her, loved her. But he was meant to rule, so he imprisoned her for waging war against her husband.

Herman in Verona ask about my love life. I have no ready answers to give, for I created the distance between us. Vorona asks if it's better to have meaningless sex with someone you don't love, or live in a sexless country.

Herman says the distance between Sonny and me has more to do with that sexual potential, of what might happen, rather than a lack of desire. Verona tells me if he keeps going back to the ex-girlfriend, and has been picking fights, he's afraid of commitment, so the trouble between us is sexual though there's no sex between us. Therein lies the rub.

What would I do with my life if there was no possibility that I would fail? Herman asks me. And I can't get past that domestic laundry of wanting to be with someone, be it Sonny and Nathan, knowing there'd be times when I'd go crazy.

But if I had the option of having both the domestic and the artistic life, what would I choose? It's more than what I have to give, give up my art even when it doesn't come to me easily? I remain loyal to it.

Herman notes that I'm not producing much these days, but it's strong and succinct. What would happen if I was able to live my dream? Well, the element of surprise always arises, how would I survive? Words like "but" and "how" are open to interpretation.

Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year

(I was obsessed with the overlap of science and poetry, so these fragments represent at least a half a year’s writing, if not the entire year…At first it was an ark, a winter of massive floods of epic proportions, then it became an arc.)

—for Max "Sonny" Lowe

The story of rain begins and ends in the oceans. The river, called St. Ignacio, Slavianka, el Río Russo, the Russian River—leaps its banks, pays us a neighborly visit. Divulges its real name to the sea. Encircling each tree, the rising river claims small, vertical kingdoms. Mountains caught in the act of becoming islands & isthmuses again. Ancient shores & riverbeds unveiled. Centuries of mud erode in the afternoon, fossils come to light. We’re marooned. Again. After a decade, or two—depending upon who’s keeping score—the great California drought officially ends. The cats bitterly complain about the weather. My neighbor notes it’s been 40 days since we’ve seen the sun. On the eve of the Epiphany we measure rain falling in biblical proportions by the foot, & threaten to build an arc for when our cabins fail us.

When I found Paleolithic fossils of raindrops frozen in stone, I envied the age of redwoods on the 100-year flood plane recording weather in annular increments—decades but a moment in time. The warrior rain on the roof drums up a tattoo of words to engulf the muse. My poor drowned heart.

TO A NEIGHBOR

TO A NEIGHBOR

                  Je pense donc je suis

                   —Descartes, 1637

                       For Sonny Lowe

Because of your small son we find ourselves

inducted, offering meals at the rude altar.

Within his frenzied orbit we find ourselves

trading dishes across the truce of doorways,

sharing intimacies, bartering the intangible.

Coming home from the niteclubs,

at the changing of the guard, you slip

into the evacuated shroud of my body heat:

in this way we learn the odor of each other’s skin.

On the clothesline, garments whip small plots

of insurrection against the approaching storm.

I saw you with the wounded face of a stranger

test the loneliness of granite. Bluesman or poet:

we each have a vested interest in the art of suffering.

The cats crave the simple praise of hands before they’ll eat.

To hold what is good also requires merciless attention.

On the anniversary of my grandmother’s death

I learned the name of my mother’s death; took refuge

in the ordinary: a boy carving pumpkins, the tv’s baleful stare.

Not the lump in my breast, or the generational patterns

we belabored and distrusted.  The mirror of the son in your eyes.

What truth faced my father (like yours) who raised

another jar against the darkness until it swallowed him?

Over coffee, laundered secrets struggle against

daylight like young birds, or new-born planets—

The juxtaposition of distance against the kenning,

the knowing; the fatal separation of mind and body:

I suffer, therefore I am has kept so many of us safe for years—

The cup of coffee, a fragrant vessel across the River Styx.

Death eats my mother’s bones until they shine 

with the purity of snow while we gather stones

to build walls against the coming of winter,

no longer able to shrug off the inevitable—

the genetic cloth of familial patterns

unravels us with the same mistakes.

Early warning signals do not efface the reflection

of your son’s eyes against the mirrored river.

None of us chooses family, neighbors, or love.

Despite everything, like death, the spectacle

of hope persists, colors everything we do.

10/24/94  

WINE OVER GOLD

WINE OVER GOLD

               —for Sonny Lowe

This is just to say

I got it all wrong:

it wasn’t “Love, or money.”

A friend told me to choose

“Love over gold.”

Sure, love would be nice,

but I haven’t been off the farm so long

I can’t recognize a real gold mine

in a shade tree mechanic when I see it.

Getting my truck running again

is gold enough for me.

(For starters, such technical precision it took

smashing those solenoids with crow bars—

Perhaps more appropriate material

for matters of the heart.

Or is it faith?)

Yet we drink strong wine

from the shattered glass of courage,

and daily existence threatens

to run off at the mouth with a poem—

(the chances we each foolishly take).

Is there a Murphy’s Law for love?

Maybe Jim should’ve said,

“Wine over gold…” & just left

love out of the fucking equation.

9/17/94

SUNNY BLUES

SUNNY BLUES

I got the blues so bad, gotta get outa this town

The bluesman’s done gone and turned me down

Had a man in New York, another in Leningrad

Two more waited in vain for me by the canals of Amsterdam

When the bluesman turns you down, it’s more than bad

It’s pathetic. No need to leave town to find the blues

It’s got me here at home, right where I am

These blues have got me runnin’ around

The bluesman’s done gone and turned me down

And when he comes over to fix my brakes

I get lost in his naked hills and then I hesitate 

Maybe I’ll tool on down the road, go to Bolinas

get outa town just to save what’s left of my pride

Instead I feed him blackberry pie, pretend it’s all right

No need to leave town to find the blues

The blues’ve got me at home, right where I am

When Sonny plays the blues birds fall from the sky.

Is there nothing between us ’cept my imagination?

Maybe I’ll fly to Spain, I might go to Prague

I wanna say, “Take me for a ride, we’ll go whole-hog,

we’ll go dancin’, yeah, dancin’ in the rain

These blues have got me runnin’ around

The bluesman’s done gone and turned me down

I was too slow on the uptake, she who hesitates

is lost, that’s why I’m sittin’ here all alone

with no single man to call my own

What can I do but wait, dream about him all night long?

Or is he just another man who’d do me wrong?

No need to leave town to find the blues

The blues’ve got me at home, right where I am

I’ve been dreamin’ of scorpions & snakes

stung by the tale of his kisses, been staying up late

just to keep from dreaming that same old song

I neck with a bottle of wine, biding my time

take his kid blackberrying on the back roads of my mind

These blues have got me runnin’ around

The bluesman’s done gone and turned me down

I wanna feel his lips on my harmonica 

wiggle my hips and slide down his trombone

But he’s talkin’ to his new woman on the telephone

We’ll never make sweet music and a brand new song

or go dancin’ in the rain in Forestville

No need to leave town to find the blues

The blues’ve got me at home, right where I am

I like the way his mouth slides down that Mississippi harp

When he smiles at his new woman, it damn near breaks my heart

I got the blues so bad, don’t wanna be hangin’ around

These blues’ve got me runnin’ ragged into the ground

singin’ the place names of blue: indigo midnight prussian delf sky

I got the blues so bad, I gotta get outa town

The blues’ve got me at home, right here, right where I am

And I can’t ever sing him this sweet, sad song           

                                               

7/17/94