00:45 - July 23, 2003
improv ecstasy
Talking to strangers is always a fun way to spend an evening (seriously). Making Mike make horrified faces is another fun way to spend it, and I figured out something I call the 'Bum Theory' regardless of the fact that it isn't a theory. See, if you park downtown during the day and eat, you have to pay the meters. If you park there after dark, you don't have to pay the meters, but you pretty much do have to pay one of the many bums that hang around outside whichever restaurant you're eating in. It all evens out in the end.

So I'm sitting innocently at work unscrewing saxophone keys, when Ted comes bouncing in with a blowtorch. I fell over backward in my spinny chair, but it turned out he (only) wanted me to set soddered on keys on fire with it, and then drop them into cold water. Little does he know. I'm not touching any blowtorch. I can see it now: brassed together left hand, left hand melted to pliers, permanently. Wet metal specks embedded in my skin. I'm not touching the fucking blowtorch.

I keep listening to that one part in 'Paths of Glory' over and over, that part where Mike Patton is screaming 'Again! Again! Again! Again!' louder and louder and uglier and uglier and unbearable, and the guitar is in octaves woowoowing c-d up and down and up and down, unbearable and building building building until something snaps and it all falls into place, the guitar the exact same riff, but now completely in rhythm in tune with the rest of the music, and Patton: 'I'm not afraid... but I'm afraid...'
It's explosive, orgasmic. When Chris did his Faith No More improv dance, way back first semester, he would be crumpled to the ground in the tense time before and at that explosion he would jerk and unfurl, stretch with hands shaking towards the sky (the ceiling rimmed with pizza boxes) face contorted in improv ecstasy.

23:34 - July 20, 2003
crayon lines
It's thunderstorming out, or it was a few minutes when I decided to say that it was. (The lag between opening IE and my mind is somewhat great.) Stayed clear for the campout and downpours when I get home. I slept in the car anyway, but it was nice not to have to step out into soaking blades and angry drowning worms, and melting plastic shoes. I was sick on Friday night, I think, or I was anxious, but it didn't feel like either, it just felt like aggravation, and I threw the tent open, zipping with fumbly fingers; I'm sure I'm going to puke in the tent, but I don't. And the car is locked, and I am helpless at 2 a.m., stepping with bare feet on pebbles. Nikki unlocks her car door for me and I flounce in all.. aggravated, but I get the first sleep of the night then, that feverish everything's true sleep where I'm remaking the whole history of punk rock the way it would be if it came from my head, at 3 a.m., on a Friday night, in the woods, shivering.

I make it sound bad but it wasn't. It was fun. We went horseback riding and the only horse not muzzled was mine, because it was the owner's horse and she didn't want to muzzle it. As a result, while everyone else's horse was just walking along the path behind the horse in front of them like they were supposed to, mine was eating grass, and Nora's was running her into trees. When I got off I couldn't touch my knees together. We went back to the gazebo, and everyone else sat in the shade, but I sat in the sun, and cooked to medium rare. The beach we tried to find was hiding, and we drove for two hours looking for it. The only other one we found we had to pay ten dollars for, which was almost more than camping expenses for everyone, so instead we ran around in a cornfield, planning on stealing some corn and eating it, but corn season is autumn, so there was no corn, which was okay. Corn is planted tall enough and in enough of a straight line that running through it might be more fun than stealing it or eating it anyway.

There is a lot of group weirdness and a lot of group comfort, and group dynamics that I haven't noticed before that made me think. And wonder, and be grateful, and also be hurt. At midnight we smoked in a field down the path from our campgrounds, and the walk back was just Camille and I clutching each other and looking back to see that the clearing was no farther away no matter how long we walked... right behind us. It was a long tunnel of mulberry trees, and darkness, and suppressed screaming, and delicious confusion.

Our vision drawn in crayon lines, even with our eyes closed, so we can't see you... don't be embarrassed.

previous - next