6AM in Texas as i write this.






everyone here is mesmerized by these pillars of flame on the southern border of the airfield.

So primal, these 15-20ft slices of hell roar silently in the pre-dawn like some warning from an impending warlord. the students say that they're visible 40-50 miles away from the air. i imagine the planes drawn to them like giant moths.

It's Halliburton.
They're doing some madness over there. They've scooped up piles of earth to make ramparts that shield them from casual sight, but their toys stick up. Antennae, a big-ass satellite dish, some cranes... who the fuck knows.
Their innocuous white trucks, stenciled "HALLIBURTON" on the sides, snake up and down the access road at all hours like army ants. Cars, pick-ups, half-vans, all manner of vehicle. In and out. In and out.

Makes me think of the Nazi camp in Raiders of the Lost Ark - the one in Egypt where Indy had the 3-cubit staff, and the snakes, and ...yeah.

Wonder what they've got on over there. Mjolnir was in Oklahoma until recently, mebbe there's some crazy artifact hidden in the neohills of southwest Denton.
Dammit.

Hope i'm not supposed t'be guarding it, whatever it is. Worst Eternal Champion EVAR.




speaking of apocalypse: today i bought non-boot, non-black shoes.
k, they're kinda black.



p365(244): Van HellShoe







.

this journal is now limited access.

if yeh've been here, then yeh should understand.

if yer new, well... it ain't that easy.



if yeh'd like t'stick around, drop me a line.




thanks.

i have made ice cream:
Chili Mango ( with pecans)
Double Chocolate Stout ( from this)

and i'm gonna go listen to my mates make some music on the porch at our pub.

and i'm gonna think about her hand in mine about a thousand times. and i'll sing a little, and laugh.

and pray for fire - but the good kind. the kind that tickles the air and makes eyes shine.
the kind that cleans and makes yeh see othercolours.












my top 21 most-listened to songs from last week, accordin' to the thingies what looks at my stuff like that:



1) The Heartstring Stranglers – jennie
2) Reflexive Repetition – The Backyard
3) Yo La Tengo – Saturday
4) Johnny Cash – I Walk the Line
5) Magnum Octopus – Feeding Ribbons to a Frog
6) Dinosaur Jr. – Hey I live for that Look
7) Afghan Whigs – My Curse
8) rtb2 – Wishy Waltz
9) The Replacements – Can't Hardly Wait
10) The Dresden Dolls – Lonesome Organist
11) The Decemberists – Grace Cathedral Hill
12) Hüsker Dü – Dead Set On Destruction
13) I Love Math – Only Clowns Are Scary
14) Adem – Starla
15) The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle
16) Cat Power – I Found A Reason [Velvet Underground cover]
17) Milow – Ayo Technology (Acoustic)
18) Apollo Sunshine – We Are Born When We Die
19) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Into My Arms
20) The Drams – Des Moines
21) Joe Ely – Gallo del Cielo







.

Solstice.
Some years ago my momma died on the Solstice. черепаха asked me if it was painful for me, and i confess i'd never given it that thought. i'm sure it is on some levels, but i'd never quantified my loss with the date, tho i'm guilty of that with ten thousand other days and things.

And i told her, articulating it even as it tumbled outta my mouth into her kitchen, that in so many ways i think momma was just ready to go.
not ready to leave, to leave her husband, her children, her friends; but to go.
Momma'd struggled with pills and drink and her fibromyalgia, and for so long just trying to make completion of things.

and it'd never made much sense to me until that very moment that that girl made me use that part of my mindgarden.
and i went stupid, and typical, and thot about how much they'd get along.


For solstice, i realized i'd finished a song.
i was up at dawn. i'd been singing all day. i'd stood in the Texas sun and talked to God. i'd breathed with/held a baby. i'd made a good dinner with an incredible woman.
and i'm making ice cream right now for my friends tomorrow (chili mango, with a few pecans innit).

and i have good hands, but they dun know how t'be empty very well.
they need to make, to soothe, to push and pull, my hands are what completes me here when my heart fails me.
well, fails me is the wrong way to say it. My heart gets lost sometimes, wandering thru the woods of her, and songs, and the kind of silence that comes when you drive thru the rain and suddenly go under a bridge
and everything stops.
all that noise that you knew was there, but didn really hear it until it was off in those few seconds.
and it seems i stay in those moments more often that not.

but i need to feel the rain, i need to hear it hit my roof, to watch it run across my windshield in failed fractals, to know that it's cool and soft just inches away.

Solstice.
My sun is moving moving moving, and i have zero control over it. i am less a planet than an asteroid belt: in constant movement, in steady path, but fragmented. a melange of minerals and gems, ices, glass and hidden fires like some celestial mardi gras strand about the neck of Eris herself.

Solstice.
Tonight my mouth was full of thick soft words. 'Write you a letter tomorrow', and a hundred halves of songs i rarely think about in the daylight.

i love the way her hair smells of earth.

Solstice.


There was a gypsy friend of mine in Morgantown who was trying to trasnlate Romeo & Juliet into Rom. But there's no word of 'envious' in the Romani language, so neither the moon or the maid got to be jealous.
i remember writing some of it down, and i've kept it with me all these years:

"I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks.
two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
to twinkle in their spheres till they return."

in the Rom, this became:

"I do not dare, and she doesn't dare tell me.
Two beautiful stars in the clouds
have work elsewhere - they want her eyes
to give light in their place
until they come back."




p365(229): Solstice






.

"Do you have to hurt to make songs?" she asked me.
And the first answer was "yes", but only instinctively. in reality, no.

"Delirium" is a wonderful little song that's free of pain, and "Flood" almost so ( tho i cannae claim full credit for it...).

so i rose to her challenge and spent 2 days making a song that celebrates. It's still a quiet song, all minor chords and heartpulse, but it's a 'hello' song, not a 'goodbye' song.

and that makes so much difference.

Dear Cate wordpainted me once, "Es un milagro!", a giant satyr frolicking in the ocean.

and i know i'm swimming, but right now, i have to have to have to. i cannae ignore it when the sun comes up in the west.

i take my inspiration from the energies of walls meeting and chipping. From the arc and spark of drunken elementals taunting their own lightning tails. From Marianas-deep tangible possibilites that rest in your hands in the dark.
It's dark. there could be anything in your hand, anything at all. All i have is your voice of it and it's real.
reason is nostrum, and everything behind the sun is brighter than that silly ol' star.

i take my inspiration in the musk of it, drawing me to the wild. tree-weaving, stonesinging, sun-powered and star-crowned, breathing feathers and leaves, reminding me that i am an animal after all, and gloriously so.

i take my inspiration in the glow of her berm, in every caution writ for either or all of us, in the worn stairs of her Sighisoara, in the proud eyes of lighthouses and balefires, in the window and the blinds.

the soft weight of her at me, or in Angstrom-sized absence...

and in as fragile as we both are.





if you knew how afraid i was, you would never be.





p365(228): Like Shakespeare's child To be where you are







you'd think i'd be better at being stupid.




.

"I have placed my bones in a jar as if possessed,
i have pasted a black wing over my left breast,
i have washed the white out of the moon at my sink"
– anne sexton







p365(227): Uniphore




if i am, or have ever been nothing else: i am true.












.

and i was in the sun this morning, cleaning the helicopter windshield. Bon Iver, John Zorn, then Danny Young in my headphones, and Texas breeze across every bit of me, alone on the tarmac, surrounded by wings and the giant eyes of flying machines...

And i recalled words i'd read recently, words i'd been given, words half-made under my chin, waltzing with a thin-fingered skatetouch across this stupid skin of mine.

And the sun told me to remember the moon, and the Texas underneath me told me to pay attention: that there was starlight comin and i had to sit still for a bit or i could miss it.

"Sit still, boy," Texas told me. As plain as the cold side of the pillow.


...and my hand absently went to my cheek, my eyes closed, and i drank the noon and as the day peeled back i remembered what it was i was feeling:


happy.





Hey, this is radio notwolf
"Young Americans" - Danny Young ( covering Bowie)






.

today
when that word came out of my mouth, it was no longer her name
but once again
it was no longer just a word




p365(226): The merciful god disguises his way in random accelerations








i have spilled your limbs
scattered across no floor we could see

shadows and wind ignored us

in our galleons cobbled of lyrics and laments
our wakes are turtle-quiet
dream-coasting,
rudders carved of Cassini's bones worn smooth from a million palmings

and one pearl, two
silent stars burning cold on the surface of every drop of wine ever brought

i will not miss my trees
these ribs you've made of them hum as they bow, validating poor dead Laplace

(Every wise man's son doth know)












.

Where were you in 1985? Prolly not born.
p365(223): 1985



this is yer view from behind Serenity. Heed.

p365(224): Look




And Pub Quiz Monday night at Dan's Slver Leaf. we catch the sunset and spin each other's myths.

p365(225): In The Twilight Glow I See Her






today was a strange one, but the whole week has been a tornado, pretty much. Actually, June has been nothing less than a huge paradigm shift for me, and i hope i survive it.

i've not been so challenged, confused, apprehensive, pensive, and hopeful in a long while.

or mebbe i'venae allowed m'self to be.

seems that my epistemology has been subtly inverted, but my feet stay on the ground
(i think)

i have a tendency to dive, to immerse myself in people, places, things. i crave the experience of the experience, and i drink deep deep when i find the taste.

and that can be too intense for those that ain't me innit, sometimes.

remember? ... breathe...






Hemingway, you told it best, you articulate dead fisherman:
"What do you value the most?"
"Someone I love"





.

and i am an explosion in the sky, i am the only moment we are alone, and the earth is not a cold, dead place.


my hands still vibrate to those energies: truncated, brilliant, sublime, and resonant in the dual poundings of hearts in ourobourous.
She crowns me in fearful moonlights and vowelsong peeking thru chakric avalanche, and somehow i manage to raise the forgotten flags of this confederacy of plausibility and my hearthanded cavalry.

i am sturm and drang, a 7-candled, purple-clouded dawnchaser, and i have her storm in my mouth.

oh, my mouth.







my top 21 most-listened to songs from last week, accordin' to the thingies what looks at my stuff like that:



1) Slobberbone – One Rung
2) rtb2 – Wishy Waltz
3) ryan thomas becker – Cannonball
4) Cory Branan – Hell-bent and Heart-first
5) The Smashing Pumpkins – Siva
6) The Baptist Generals – Going Back Song
7) Slint – Washer
8) Moon – Jane Roberts
9) Lovers – The First Law of Thermodynamics
10) Kris Delmhorst – Ain't No Grave
11) Pinebox Serenade – The Plains
12) U2 – Tower Of Song (Featuring Leonard Cohen)
13) Allen Ginsberg – Sunflower Sutra
14) Slobberbone – Scuffed
15) Verulf – Athena
16) Two Cow Garage – Should've California
17) Old Crow Medicine Show – I Hear Them All
18) Leonard Cohen – A Thousand Kisses Deep
19) Sonic Youth – I'm Not There (Bob Dylan cover)
20) Wussy – Gone Missing
21) Matisyahu – Close My Eyes

And i saw the dawn how it's supposed t'be seen: beginning the day. Not that the dawn after allnight isnae grand and all, but there's a different perspective for it when you wake up as it crawls towards you.

i left my curtains elsewhere and let it wash over me in the shared breathing, squinty-eyed, half-brain glory that it was. Such a gloriously simple morning to crown a languid night amongst friends, fire, food and music.


Lunch was Kombucha, dates, and sleep.

p365(221): epigynous



And today the sky was threatening. Not in hurt, but in a reminder of the terrible majesty of it. Like being friends with the king, and sometimes you're reminded in not-too-subtle ways that he's king for a reason.

This was my sky tonight before dark go there. These are the colours of my Texas, and where my eyes settle when pointed up. We're almost in sepia, here. Balancing the artthought of yesterday with the paths and tools of tomorrow in a terrible, fantastic canvas of the heart.

We paint on our walls until we remember what our windows are for.


p365(222): With an eye towards the hydrographer

(unretouched, btw)






.

i spent the morning surrounded by Chinese people, then some of lunchtime offworld with surprise! mangoes and the zephyr of a long white skirt, chasing my afternoon with my mouth full of all the things i should have said ( probably) but didnt need to ( probably).

i am continuously struck by the feather in her voice, and the way she crawls over my words like an inchworm. She lets me stay in her eyes like a cookie-jar dare, and her fingers in mine are the tetris of falling earth.

This is the softest fire i've ever seen.


And music, always music. All thru my day... in spite of canceling rehearsal.

Tho, and i respect this, the newest person i invited to play in Starhead 2.0 listened to the CD for a couple of days, then bowed out gracefully. He says that the music is too sad, too emotional, and he needs to play something 'happier'.
i think i'll take that as a complement.

i walked to the pub for dinner, outstepping the storm just only, but i still had time to stop and catch these flowers towering over me on the way...



and dinner was fucking remarkable as well ( goat cheese and swiss chard torte, roast beast over homemade onion bread, chocolate cherry biscotti) crowned with a tornado ( literally) or two, and introducing some friends to Tsuro while the storm raged and fell asleep low over Texas.




p365(220): Shelter From The Storm


Evening found me walking home between raindrops, surfing shadows, singing to myself and whatever part of the sky i share. There were trees, spanked and bruised from the storm, still being brave for me tho. The park was littered with bits of branches and homeless limbs scattered about the path like a spilled bucket of toy soldiers.

The trees continued to look skyward, and i followed their example...







"i owe you a song, for a sunset.."
"you owe me a whole album..."





and even later, i was begging corn starch from Dear Cat, so i can make ice cream.

Double Chocolate Stout ice cream. It's chilling right now.

and it may well be, without exaggeration, thee best ice cream i've ever made.


i'm gonna sleep soo well tonight.





.

lazy tuesday. An amazing (duh) show from RTB2 ( and Delmore Pilcrow as well, ya'll), then a surreal walk home down the railroad tracks with my iPod, the moon fighting the clouds, and it all moving with me in a kind of calm i notice i'd been missing.

sometimes it's strange to get so wrapped up in a song and have the back of my mind remind me that i know the damn songwriter, that my friends are as much a part of my art and heart as my boots are sometimes a part of my feet.

and i was walkin the tracks, all woven up in the song, and i literally ran into this sign.

and yeah, i laughed.


p365(219): troof






This is radio notwolf:
"One Rung" - Slobberbone







.

Man, every day since Friday, i've wished i'd just fucked off and gone camping. Not like i have such a busy schedule. i was on a list for a job, but when i called to follow-up, the girl i was up against for it answered the phone.
Not a good sign. i really really need a job that pays real monies. i even went to Labor Ready, but they said they didn have anything. i've got cards out there in the market and i hope i get my monies for them before the landlady turns her pretty eyes my way...

and i'm another plateau with this weightloss crap. and i fucking CRAVE sugar constantly. And with the exception of a bit of homemade buttermilk ice cream today, i've been offa refined sugar almost completely, and mostly offa wheat and gluten as well - but it' makes me a bit manic ( or more manic, lol) as my body adjusts to using other reserves. and being diabetic is no help, either.

Crave.
but every time i start to reach for the crap, the bad food, i ask myself if i want that, or the girl more.
Not that i'm squared away t'deal with a /her on very many levels, but i will be again one day, i'd conjure.

and i dun want /her to flinch when she looks at me.






but, Sunday.

Cannae believe i've been playing this game for 15 years. Cannae believe i've been on 2 teams, one semi-pro one.

Cannae believe i've basically paid my rent for the past 4 months offa it.



p365(217): Gathered





oh, and my top 21 most-listened to songs from last week, accordin' to the thingies what looks at my stuff like that:



1) Bon Iver – The Wolves (Act I and II)
2) Centro-matic – Say Something / 95 Frowns
3) Cory Branan – Hell-bent and Heart-first
4) Slint – Breadcrumb Trail
5) Willie Nelson – A Peaceful Solution
6) ryan thomas becker – Bweams
7) Mazzy Star – Halah
8) Gemma Hayes – At Constant Speed
9) Slint – Carol
10) The Baptist Generals – Going Back Song
11) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps (acoustic)
12) rtb2 – Yer Fool's Suite (Part II)
13) Explosions in the Sky – Your Hand in Mine
14) Slint – Washer
15) Cowboy Junkies – Ain't No Place For A Poor Girl Like Me
16) Pinebox Serenade – The Plains
17) Lucero – Tears Don't Matter Much
18) Neutral Milk Hotel – Two-Headed Boy
19) The Drams – Holy Moses
20) Karen Dalton – Little Bit Of Rain
21) Ray Wylie Hubbard – The Messenger





lunch today? LOOK AT THIS MADNESS:


p365(218): NOM


that's right, peanut butter & strawberries.

i know what's good.




but this week is gonna be interesting, i'd conjure.

t'say the least.


.

.

.












any hard-core WOW players or know anyone:
i have a code for the Rocket Mount, which i'd like t'sell for $200.

sells for 400-500 OL. lemme know.



.

"The black moon
turns away, its work done. A tenderness,
unspoken autumn.
We are faithful
only to the imagination. What the
imagination
seizes
as beauty must be truth. What holds you
to what you see of me is
that grasp alone."

-Denise Levertov


...and by the time Wednesday hit, i was leaving the planet.

p365(213): The Star of David, The Tree of Life, The Cross, and E = mc2



Thursday brought me back to Ft Worth ( where i was born)

p365(214): cut/out



Friday was chock-full of the notusual, thanks.

p365(215): WORST PIRATES EVAR



and Saturday was loooong at work. And with no internets, so i didn do any of the writing i planned on/needed to. Yeah, i read most of the day and listened to Slint and Yo La Tengo. A tiny tiny girl brought me a tuna sangwich ( black olives, pickles, onion) and a giant iced tea. She smelled like a hookah.

p365(216): Absolute Watchmen




and tomorrow? Sunday. i doubt very very seriously that it'll be a day of rest.



.

and my guitar is under my hands most every night now, except the one where i came home so late in the day/morning that i almost forgot to pray. The one where my head was stuffed so full of the flowers of you that i exhaled honeysuckle and orchids.
That trees called to me to sit with them and share inspiration: Peach, plum, pear.

and god's wounds that kiss held every bit of wonder as a cat's laugh.
how did you do that,
and why?





"I ask you to inspect my heart
and name its pictures.
I push open the door to your heart
and I see all your children sitting around a campfire.
They sit like fruit waiting to be picked.
I am one of them. The one sipping whiskey."

– anne sexton





i have had the weather and Leonard Cohen in my head for a couplea days.
neither have disappointed me.



p365(212): tower of song







.

“ I’m a big fan of pretension. It means “an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment.” It doesn’t mean failing upward. It means trying to exceed your grasp. Which is how things grow."
- Warren Ellis






Hello Starhead 2.0...





p365(211): the gift that ashes bring






.

IF you'd care to hear/DL the podcast of Starhead on the radio from Saturday, it's HERE



apparently at one point, i kept it real.

p365(210): 100000 whut?


piles more in my flickr, if yer so inclined. Including Petra, our newest violinist. She's snazzy.





Annit's Sunday, so here's my top 21 most-listened to songs from last week, accordin' to the thingies what looks at my stuff like that:



1) Midlake – Golden Hour
2) Lovers – Peppermint
3) The Orbans – This Is
4) Ani DiFranco – Pulse
5) Grizzly Bear – Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes cover)
6) Ramones – Sheena Is a Punk Rocker
7) The Beatles – Golden Slumbers
8) William Ridenour – man named silence
9) The Mountain Goats – Pure Honey
10) Solomon Burke – None of Us Are Free
11) Willie Nelson – Smells Like Teen Spirit
12) Calico – Alligator
13) Ryan Adams – Bartending Lines
14) blink-182 – Dick Lips
15) Lauryn Hill – Water (acoustic)
16) Wilco – Kingpin
17) Chevelle – Forfeit
18) DeVotchKa – Disappointed
19) Frightened Rabbit – Head Rolls Off
20) Delphi – kabal
21) Afghan Whigs – I Keep Coming Back






(be careful in Ireland, Kimpossible)
.

and they ran out, w00t!

p365(206): restock



i cross this bridge almost every night. There are no trolls, btw...

p365(207): compline



and this guy.

p365(208): del gato!





and after scrubbing the sky for a few days, Texas carved up the clouds and let them drift away like ice floes...

p365(209): “A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out”