too much beauty to sleep

We used to go on Cleveland drives all the time when we were younger, when we were twenty, of let's see how far this road goes and what's on it, we've never been to this neighborhood before let's go there, oh wow, how did we end up here ( in the projects at 2am on Martin Luther King Day, in the spooky dark national park listening to Patti Smith's Horses and feeling a sense of hauntedness, cruising through subdivisions cranking Jay-Z channeling the id of teenage boys, singing along to bad classic rock and slap-happy, listening to Minor Threat and yelling die yuppie scum at dressed up art walk denizens.

We found all sorts of strange beauty on these travels, and never felt afraid for the most part, because the car provides a tank-like sense of relative invincibility that bikes and two feet do not have. We haven't done this in awhile, with work schedules and in her case a significant other and my life's been one thing a minute too.

And now we're older and there is more weight on us, and we have no music, and so much to catch up on, and there are no new streets because we've traversed every neighborhood so many times over, and she goes into every hood in Cleveland for her job, so we cut through East Cleveland where all the streetlights seem to be out but the traffic cameras are everywhere, where the towering hulks of abandoned apartment buildings and decaying mansions loom on the periphery.

We'll need gas and a bathroom at some point but despite our intrepidity, the darkness is so intense, the heat and the corners make everything seem to throb with a what will happen next and we drive past no-tell-motels and storefront churches and I wish I felt like I could shoot photos without feeling like a white-privilege voyeur, and the eastern suburbs lack the sense of landscape, or it's the 1950s kind where things never really took off and half the store signs are for businesses no longer there, and we get late night waffles and talk about everything that's been going on, processing through the bad, laughing at the good, with little nostalgia given how I get sentimental about these things I love so much and we turn in earlier than usual, around 2am instead of 5am, and I wake up late the next morning feeling like half the day is gone.

There is time in the garden, and time catching up on sleep, and time spent pondering the universe with good souls, and walking up the street to an afternoon noise show where folks were friendly and I felt bad for holding my ears through half of it even with earplugs, and it was interesting, it reminded me of my prof who was in Fluxus back in the art school days but I'm just not a noise kid. I like noise with structure, I like songs, I like things that don't remind me of going to the dentist or hanging out next to a jet engine but that is me and purely me. 

I got the art stuff out last night because me and one of the radio girls wanted to get all collagey and I couldn't come up with anything, I need to not be so rusty with all that, it's just that when the days are this golden and lacking in loneliness, it's hard to.

runaway return

It was hard to wake up this morning, after sleeping in on a lumpy bed, waking up groggy to greet the sunrise behind castle-like clouds looming over the island on the horizon, but rituals of St. Drogo, the familiar routine of coffee and power chords, or in this case blastbeats, watching The Kids file in and out, it's not a bad place to come back to.

Driving through the western half of Ohiostan is its own adventure, and there was something strange in the incongruity from place to place, of the stately palatial homes along the lake, the slightly tackier dwellings of the nouveau riche or those with bad taste, heading further out past crumbling and faded facades in towns built on the steel no longer made here, a post office building housing a "buy gold" enterprise, empty factories like some Springsteen cliche.

The turn onto the island reveals a somewhat-new welcome center and a brand-spanking new Border Patrol station just across the street. The juxtaposing of 'welcome tourists' and the razor wire on the other side is disconcerting to me. As soon as I pull in it starts to rain, but I have a trunk full of books and a few layers so I make myself a cup of tea, begin with the pile and listen to the sound of the waves, talk to the next-door neighbor and heir to this chunk of peninsula who in the name of history lets my grandparents rent this place cheaper than a hood apartment in Clevelandia, as he tells me about retirement, traveling around to see jam bands, and the surveillance drones that fly over the water.

where's the pictures? you might ask. Some of us don't utilize technological devices while driving... most of the time.

This has been the childhood idyll of so long, and the emotional retreat in my adulthood that there's a part of me that has a sense of innocence lost. Crass tourism is one thing, the encroachment is another. I suppose it makes people feel safe but it's just weird to me.  The sky once felt so open that we played under, there are now snakes in the water where we swam, nonpoisonous but still awkward, I read the first volume of the Gormenghast trilogy, chunks of the annotated Hobbit, Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz,travel writing about awesome places that I'll probably never get to see because they've been similarly obliterated by both commercialistic and state shenanigans.

Still, there was beauty to be found, a sense of pristineness, I guess. It rained so much that the green was easy on the eyes and abundant. We drove to a state park known for being a primo birding spot, due to its closeness to the lake and the marshy wetlands full of light pink mallow and lotuses, the tower of the nuke plant notwithstanding.

 As kids we once played on the beach and collected the pale pink shells of freshwater clams, the beach has been left to revert, no sand Zambonis or lifeguards, and underneath the menacing clouds, the tension in the green water, it had an air of wildness that I loved.

 There was a boardwalk through the swampy woods that reminded me of some rainforest with its lushness and only being able to hear the drone of insects, the sound of wind on wet leaves like rain, the solitude.

The rest of the three days was spent reading more, drinking more tea, making fires, gazing up at the stars, having a subsequent dark night of the soul, good conversations with the parents, and waking up the last morning for a sunrise perhaps not quite so epically paintlike but still beautiful.

In all honestly, I like those dark moments before the sun hits best. Sad that one can't see the sliver of crescent moon there.

That gold there is hardly done justice, but it was lovely.

escapes

A much-needed vacation in the works, spinning many plates means that getting out of the slabbe gets tres complicated, provided it doesn't rain, as it did the last two days. I'm a creature of habit, comfortably numb locked into routine, five years running now, which has led to a dogged stability that belies the weird artistic impulses and occasional roiling emotions. Or, as the archival collection on immigrants to Clevelandia described my forbears, having "plodding and persevering determination" as befitting a true Slav. A day or two feels kosher, four days in a row with a fill-in for my show something excessive and I wonder how much I've bought into this system out of habit not addiction, like the caffeine that gets my heart beating every morning enough to function.

But there's something wonderful about the swirling green waters, sitting on the breakwall, not having obligations for a small window of time, of the ritual of watching the sun rise and set and the moon burn red over the islands, of making fires, watching stars, playing guitar and reading reading reading.

I need a cleansing and refreshing, a time to get alone and ponder for more than a few minutes at a time, a time to not have to worry about what to say and how to say, to be a speck in the created order and hopefully see some shooting stars this time around.

beside the water

Attempts to get the heck out of Clevelandia for a couple days scuttled by epic rainstorms, I woke up late and ran out the door into the rain for more of the daily grind and the Elixir of St. Drogo that makes such things bearable. Not much to do when it's pouring. I had no creative impulses to indulge and this song was on the tape deck which always makes me smile.

Dinner with the parents last night, my homie of the east side along for the ride, knowing more of what the frenchish terms were on the menu than us, much laughter ensued over various and sundry, the little guy was moody, but good times were had by all, I think.

We all parted ways and the two of us headed down to the park where we sat on the glider facing the dark water of the lake and watched spiders spin webs above our heads on the frame. He wants to move someday, he always has, and I don't blame him, either down south or northwest where there's relatives and places to go hiking in the woods and less people who do crazy things.

Fireworks are being shot off downtown so we watch them for awhile, with the reverberations coming lately to the shore below, and then we walk back through the trees, hang out on the playground and swing, it's been forever since I've swung on the playground, but it's a perfect cool and clear night, the kind I live for in the summer and I'm glad I get to spend it out here.

I'm crawling all over the carnival

Eschewed Perry Farrell & Co. for cheaper thrills with the Queen of the Bondo and Rocker Librarian, and thus we drove to the fairgrounds and people-watched the streams of humanity, cheered at the crunched metal of the demo derby qualifiers, alternately admired and were weirded out by garden produce, poultry that for some reason raised hell when I walked in despite my lack of consuming their meats, sundry cakes and wines, and collections of strange things.

I was expecting the compilations of Star Wars and WWII memorabilia, and theorized that beer steins will be the next trendy thing for the rust belt hipsters,  but not the ensemble of shrunken heads, "fairy gardens" or the coffee mugs painted with wizards or the quilt that looked morbid with its red roses and skulls and on further inspection was revealed to be a tribute to the Grateful Dead. Sadly, photos of such things did not turn out,. I'm also kind of freaked out by being up close to farm animals, being a lifelong city kid. Good times all around though, and I'm glad I live in a town where I can see Shakespeare one night and more proletarian pursuits the next.

nocturna

The thick summer air was cut and cooled by breezes, and a few phone calls later, three of us have cups of ice cream in hand and are walking down to the park as the sun sets. The skatepark is quiet, the water in the closed pool glistens but we're too old to think about sneaking in, so we stretch out on the benches of the new gazebo that feels like it's made of plastic and gaze out towards the small glitter of the skyline and the deep blue of the sky above us, listening to the crickets and the undulating water, sighing in bliss as the wind ripples through the leaves.

There's a few years of comfortable familiarity here, where we don't have to say much, and when we do, our incoherent thoughts are understood, all of us are tired and so completely relaxed that we probably sound stoned out of our minds as we ponder and ramble, voices in slow motion, disparate threads of conversation coming together about people who live in trees and people who throw mortars instead of shooting guns and he's got trip-hop playing on his phone and everything just fits together so perfectly that it's hard for us to get up and stretch to walk down to where the water is before the park closes and we walk back through the dark streets past shirtless men drinking in front of apartment buildings. I need more summer nights like these.

sparkles and smoke

A cookout with sundry east-siders, driving out to pick up Tangerine because who wants to spend the 4th alone? I did a couple years ago and it was lonely to stand there in the parking lot watching the neighborhood pyrotechnics alone and then everything that went down after that, and then last year when I crashed a party that a couple friends were invited to at a mansion on the lake where no one talked to me at all, and I wanted to leave but cursed my born gender for not feeling okay with walking home in the dark alone.

So Tangerine, being of a similar mind, and my little sis, who had nothing else to do, came over and as the clouds swirled ominously and the lightning flashed, we walked up the street with some cigarette lighters and a bag of sparklers and smoke bombs and a misplaced fun missile almost set my hoodie on fire. Big clouds of colored smoke cause a certain glee still even though we're relatively too old to be doing this whole bit, and the lighters and the wind meant the butane flames came close to grazing our fingers, so then we gave up and walked down towards the park, thinking it would rain any minute, but it didn't, and there were parties with disco music and people in the street, this is the only time when everyone mingles, and I guess that more than nationalistic feelings is why I love this holiday, there's a bit of anarchy in the air, a cutting loose and a revelry that's rare at any other time.

On the cliffs, the masses gathered with their picnic blankets and glowsticks in the shadow of the houses of the rich, who were shooting off fireworks large and loud enough from the front yard to rival those of the city. All that money burning and exploding in sparks for seconds at a time. Some lady got angry at us for blocking the view of her kid but there was nothing to look at facing the lake and the fireworks hadn't even started yet so I don't know what her problem was, but we decided not to reason with people who seemed a little unhinged.

We kept walking closer to the park, where it looked like a rave for children with all the kids busting their jedi knight moves with glowing rainbow swords and dancing with swirling LED bands. Someonethreatened to come to the house of one of the vendors and kill him for selling her a dud, I wonder if she was the lady that took a contract out to kill one of the parking attendants where I work. While I was wandering through the darkness looking for a restroom, my companions helped a lost kid find his mom and sent him home with the rest of our sparklers except for a couple boxes that we lit together.

The fireworks over the lake were beautiful and since we walked it was easy to get home, and I drove Tangerine back to the east side down the more deserted routes far from the crowds, where massive pyrotechny was happening everywhere and if we weren't totally in the hood, we would have stopped to watch, but then we heard some bullets flying too, and saw things blowing up in the street, so we kept going, buzzed on the adrenaline alone. One of my fellow djs was playing Isis and it was the perfect background sounds to the burning smell and the incandescent flashes. We had plans for post-fireworks diner food and slap-happy absurd conversations, but I knew I'd be tired the next day (getting old sucks) so I apologized to the second shifters and knew I'd made the right decision driving back across town when the only thing keeping me awake was long stonerrific jams and the whirled ponderings of the brain, coming home to fall asleep with the cat sitting guardian, two more days until the celebrations begin again. It's nice to see things looking up for a change...

independence day

My last couple 4th of Julys haven't been much fun. Last year was a party at a mansion overlooking the lake where no one talked to me and I ended up dancing the merengue with the hired help and sitting back anthropologist style observing how the other half lives, and the year before was that year that my roommate and I stopped talking and I had my tangles with The Man, so I'm not sure what to expect this time around, but there's a cookout I've been invited to, or the option of retreating to the island for the day, other things maybe, all this depending on what the weather does. Being introverted doesn't sound like half bad of an idea either. Since this is a more demure hood than my last residence, I have a feeling there won't be massive pyrotechnic feats in the middle of the street.

I still remember that one night my dad and I were driving back across town through the wild streets of Clevelandia with Spacemen 3 on the college station, and the air was fuzzed with colored smoke, the profiles of children running through the yards, the sparkle of rockets red glared zooming over the car and I was euphoric on the element of danger and the smell.

I'm ambivalent about high-minded national ideals at this point, glad to live somewhere with relative freedom even if things are getting more messed up all the time, and we're the only country that's ever nuked anybody, and there's always one road to hell or another every few years paved with the best of intentions involving abstract ideals and ways to keep the war machine on turning.

But tonight, I'm cooking dinner, sundry folk will hopefully make their way over this way, and Elder is playing down the street, so I'll get to chill out to some fabulous stoner rock if not anything else.

The day drags by like a wounded animal...

It's hot, who knew, on the first day of summer.

 

my dad has this on 45 and I'd listen to it on hot days like today.