What Does Anybody Leave So Quickly For?

Angels laid him away.

Levon

I don't know what to say. Life's wheel is spinning and so filled with color, light, life, drama, horrors, love, delight, comic strips, headphones, collages, sunburns, Styrofoam cups of vodka, drummers dying, birds cooing, the fan over my head turning, making me feel kind of cool.

It's the third day of the Master Cleanse and I read on Facebook that Levon is fixin to pass. God, I just can't come up with any euphemism that sounds even halfway decent.

What can I say?

It all rolls into one.

Here I am, on the same couch I was on in the last post, most likely still missing a lover, seeing my glass of lemonade blur into the oneness that is impossible to name and yet is all of this. All of this. Nothing.

Levon, I feel selfish that I wanted to come see you and now won't get to. I feel something - but I can't really say what - for your family, your wife, your children.

I can't imagine what it's like to be a wife and have your husband dying, but, then again, I can. It scares me and wrenches my gut, and sometimes I feel that may be why I've avoided such things, but, no. That can't be it either.

That glass on the footstool and the water glass next to it, ultimately devoid of names.

Levon dying.

Other things I saw on Facebook today:
A billboard that says "Either you love bacon or you're wrong."
A 3 year old kidnapped and mother shot and killed.
News that Tom Petty got his guitars back.
A new blue carpet gifted to my friend Shawn for the floor of his Big Red truck home. 

Me on the corner with my I LOVE YOU sign and a guy from Tel Aviv taking a photo with me to email to his wife. He's going back home in a few days, and this is the first time he's traveled back to Austin without her.
He had black eyebrows and one of them had a white patch in it.
Also today I saw Luke Wilson, I'm pretty sure. We both had our sunglasses on.

The world turns, so they tell me.

Levon, I don't know what to say.

I'm rambling to ramble. Meandering here and there, can't find any words to claim anything true or specific.

I love you.

* * * * *

Post Script:

Some cheerful news that deserves its own photo (maybe I'll get around to it . . . ) -

The plant in the post below - Mr. Tambourine Plant - that went into the back yard, possibly to die, has revived! I cut it back once it was out there for a few days, and, lo and behold, it's growing new leaves and has moved back into the bedroom. Life!

The Weight

On the couch in my corner pen here. My love seat, to be accurate. Much love has been had on this couch over the years, and it's kind of funny to find myself sitting on it today. Now.

I don't really use my living room anymore. I feel that it is easing me into smaller spaces so I'll be ready for the Airstream.

Today I heard Mooji say, "Surrender the surrenderer," and I felt as if I were diving into a warm and gentle whirlpool, into which I was merging, disappearing as I fell.

Which of my blogs does this type of writing go on? I felt I'd taxed the Tumblr blog today, and, besides, I like writing here. I like the looks of it when it's printed there on the screen.

So very very body tired lately. To move around and do much of anything, well, it just doesn't happen. A weight to the body.

Did someone say The Weight? We are on the Ramble page, aren't we?

The Weight.

The weight is in the body, the heaviness of not moving. And, yet, it is becoming more and more natural. Less and less noisy. Under-the-weatherness seems to help. How can I fight it if this is what it be?

No feeling to fight. The fighting wore itself out.

The wait.

For what?

I have waited for answers to what? I feel as if I'm in a new experience. Not quite used to it, but very excited about it. Giddy almost. So strange.

Does this belong on this page?

I guess it is a meander. Or a ramble.

Meandering to a Shower?

I have meandered to my couch. I've been here for hours, hearing intermittent rain outside, and imagining that I'm smelling old beer, like the remains the morning after a keg party, somehow being kicked into the atmosphere by the downpour.

A few days ago I took my zebra plant, Mr. Tambourine Plant, outside. I have felt that the plant's been dying, not producing new growth, for some time now. I didn't know what to do with it. First I put it in the kitchen to be around it more during the day. Then I took it outside. Now I can see it outside my bedroom window, sitting in its pot amidst backyard growth.

This morning I looked out there and wondered if I should give it some water. And then it started to rain. And then hail.

I peeked out the window at her and she seems to be doing fine. I wonder if maybe her journey outside and the rain and hail will bring her back to life. She's so sweet.

Years ago when my beloved yellow and black guppy, Tambourine, was dying, I euthanized him by putting him in some water in the freezer (on advice from the guy on the phone from PetSmart who told me to hold on while his manager was walking by so that the manager wouldn't hear the employee tell me how they euthanize dying pets at their store). It was extremely cold in Ohio that winter, and I was too cold even to take Tambourine outside. So into the freezer my dear friend went, and on my iTunes, I played every version of Mr. Tambourine Man that I had. Meanwhile, I repotted my sweet zebra plant, and when I finished, I buried my little fish in the plant. And she has thrived for years.

But like every living thing, she also has a life span. And also like every living thing, she has up times and down times. A few years ago I took her to a nursery to have her checked out since she was getting really leggy and not producing fully. I was advised to trim her stems down to a few inches each. I was nervous to do this, but I did, and, lo and behold, she grew again into a full, bushy, healthy Mr. Tambourine Plant.

I don't know anything at all. How anything will go, has gone, or is.

Mr. Tambourine Plant seems to be doing okay outside. If she keeps on living, maybe she'll come back in the house. It's an adventure, being a plant mommy.

I was going to title this post Meandering to a Requiem, but I no longer feel that this is her funeral dirge.

Now, will I meander to a shower? Maybe I could just take off all of my clothes and stand outside. The rain continues . . .

Shape I'm In

Just delicious.

I admire them for making music, living their lives, having their natural passion.



Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in.

Woo Hoo!

I don't know where my Hugh is (see When I Say That I'm Okay below) nowadays, but coming across this today, I must share, and dedicated it to him. Good stuff!

Also goes out to my big man who graced me this morning. Let's pack up the things and go!

Happy New Year, y'all!

Big Birds Were Flying Across the Sky

I'm noticing today how my thoughts don't really give any information about what's coming next. I'm tuned in to the planning nature of thought. Not like it's a problem, but I'm just seeing how thoughts say one thing and actual life either presents that or something completely different. It must be different. We can't think out exact future, can we?

Well, what about that time at the Dead show at Richfield? Spring 1994, I think, and I had played in my head the image of me being in the section where I preferred to sit, up on the side, Jerry's side; and he (at the time Hugh) would find me. Like I saw happen in Atlanta that night when we were on the Barrel of Monkeys and at a very bright and jammy moment, here came Sean, Jackie's boyfriend. In the whole giant Omni, and she said, "I knew you'd find me." She sort of has that vision. And in Richfield it worked out much the same way, right there on Jerry's side. I turned around and there he was. The only show we spent together. At least the only time we saw Jerry together.

They played this could be the last time . . . and I knew that Jerry was one before Hugh. See when I say that I'm okay, they look at me kinda strange below.

Last night I went to my friend Donna's 50th birthday party. One thing that is so clear to me is there's really no such thing as age, at least not in the way I'd thought. We talked about junior high, about outfits worn in 1989, travel in Greece: other lifetimes. And we were there, Donna's hair curled up in a super-hip flip do, and all her friends were there, reading odes of great devotion and playing music, many duets.

We played Willin' and most everyone sang along. Now that was really cool. I stumbled and fumbled through it and was nervous as I always get, but the group was so receptive and merry (and probably a little drunk) and happy to be there together, everyone clapped when we were finished.

Thank you so much to the Meandering to a Ramble blog that had me writing the word willin' . . . that had me move more deeply into the song. Thanks to youtube for turning me on to that great live video of Lowell and the band and for also having instructional videos that actually taught me how to play the song. Thanks to Todd Doerr for handing me this guitar and saying, "It's time," those many many lives ago in San Francisco. Thanks to Scott Grantham for helping me play it in a higher key.

Heh heh this sounds like my Oscar speech.

If you want to bake a Carin from scratch, first you have to create the Universe.

And while we're at it, I hear it's Neil's birthday today. Let us pranam. 




And while we're bowing, let us touch the lotus feet of our Joni, her birthday being just a few days ago.

Great people were born in November. Yep, that's you.

xx