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...

ear blisters

Cancellations were welcome, instead of gatherings of folks, it was a nap on the couch and some leftover pasta, and then one of my former roomies with whom I bonded over tuneage our freshman year of college came over and we went up the street to see Elder and sundry local bands get their stoner groove on.

One of my fellow DJs plays in the first band, and I wasn't in the mood for the second, so we stood around outside and chatted with a couple folk and caught up on life and wandered back in for some great riffy rock and or roll. It's been awhile since I've seen a band that young play the hell out of their instruments ( I was amused that every guitarist on stage that night had one kind of red Gibson SG or another) and be that ecstatic in the riffing, the drummer pounding away, the bassist holding down the low end and rhythm with a wonderfully fuzzed-out bass tone, the guitarist with Cousin It hair soloing and powerchording through ten minute epics of sweetness. The set was four songs and then an encore that sounded very Om-esque, and I could have easily listened to another hour of it. Such is the nature of the beast. 

The bros in front were completely wasted, but the crowd was pretty chill overall, and mostly dudely, me and K being the only not-with-a-guy females in the place except for one older lady and doubtless getting the what are they doing here / dude, chicks! glances. I felt short, and short-haired for good measure among that crowd but had a great time.

Not many of my friends dig the stoner sound, but I'm glad at least I've got one female in my life that does too. One of my other friends told me today he wishes he could find a girl who likes metal and I wanted to scream that yes there are some of us who like the power chords and riffs as much as you, it's just that most of us don't look like Suicide Girls, you know? We'd rather play guitars or digress about our favorite bands  than spend our money on swanky tattoos or posting skank pictures in ripped 80's thrash shirts on the Internets.

But yeah, they were fantastic, and I at least contributed enough to fill their gas tank, snagging the new LP and the old CD and a t-shirt for good measure. I want to see them go far, and I'd go see them again. It's been awhile since I've seen anything that raw and rocking in the best way.

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.

best of the blotter: Teddy Bear Graffiti Kills

ATTEMPTED FRAUD, HAMLET HILLS DRIVE: A resident of Hamlet Village, 92, reported June 29 that he had received a phone call from someone claiming to be his grandson, stating that he’d had a car accident in Madrid, Spain, and needed $1,700 to be wired to him there. The caller further stated that he was embarrassed by the whole ordeal and asked his grandfather not to tell anyone else about it and he would call back later for a tracking number. The man told police that he later realized he didn’t have a grandson, then successfully got a refund from Western Union, and when the suspect called back, told him not to contact him anymore because he was going to notify police.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF, CLEVELAND STREET: Police are investigating the appearance of graffiti near the Spillway project, where sometime between June 20 and June 30, someone drew on the retaining wall on the north side of the bridge, which is public property and will be removed by the village, as well as some private property. Some of the artwork appears to be a drawing of a teddy bear, police said.

Shrieking Geese
A Chatman Drive resident asked police to look into a strange situation at Hunter's Hollow.
The man said Friday that for the last few nights, he and his girlfriend hear geese shrieking around 2 a.m. at the apartment complex off Pearl Road.
When they go to investigate, they find a single feather.
Police told him to report the incidents when they occur so officers can check them out.

Police called for poetry
Police received a call that a man and woman were “running up and down” Detroit Avenue yelling at around 2:30 a.m. June 26. Turns out they were reciting poetry while waiting for a bus.

SUSPICIOUS, FAIRLAWN DRIVE: A resident tipped police off to a potential crime June 19.
The informant reported an odor coming from the neighbor’s trash and advised there could be body parts inside.
An officer examined the garbage and found spoiled left-over food with maggots, due to the heat. He re-bagged the trash.

DISTURBANCE, WEST RIVER DRIVE: With teens yelling and screaming, a white pick-up truck was observed cruising down the road after 10 p.m. June 11.
Officers found three boys catching frogs they saw hopping on the road illuminated by the vehicle’s headlights.
The frogs were released and the boys were sent home.

ANIMAL COMPLAINT, WEST RIDGE DRIVE: A raccoon was found in a home basement by the owner June 21.
The woman asked an officer for help. Upon his arrival, the raccoon left using a cat door.

 ANIMAL COMPLAINT, DEERFOOT TRIAL: Finding a nest of skunks under his desk, a man called police June 15 to advise them he planned to shoot them.
Shortly after his call, a neighbor called to complain about hearing gunfire.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF, LIBERTY ROAD: A woman told police on June 19 that someone put chocolate syrup on her garage door. She said it was the third time such an incident had occurred.
The police report notes that the woman said the syrup was sprayed upon the garage door in a way that “resembles a Jackson Pollack interpretation.” The woman suspects children in the area are responsible.

watch the weather change...

We stood in the empty corner office at the end of the hall, watching the birds fly backwards, the orange haze beneath the approaching darkness, the swirls of leaves and shreds of plastic bags and other detritus looping through the black hole air. The spires of the cathedral across the street are shadowed, smoky cirrus across the horizon beneath. I wish I had a camera so badly right now.

My dad and I used to watch the storms roll in from the garage. We had lawn chairs set up out there, we'd listen to classic rock on the radio and swig Coca-Cola out of a two liter bottle and he'd get a bag of chips or a pack of Twizzlers out of his car and we'd sit there and watch the wind blow up the street like we were at the movies, and we'd talk, but mostly we'd just be lost in the moment with a certain sense of awe.

all the world's a stage

In an alternate universe, I'd be a theater tech geek designing backdrops and working the lights. Once upon a time, my mom enrolled me in community theater as a very young kid for something to do in the summer. I loved the mystique of stage makeup and spotlights, but was shy about lines and thought that the repertoire was corny, because after all, we were seven years old.

One was about dinosaurs, and there's a VHS tape in the basement that involves yours truly in a lavender stegasaurus costume with orange felt spikes down the back and huge specks of glitter. This is also the only time my hair's ever been fire-engine red and glittery, which was crazy hard to wash out before school the next week. Next year the musical was about deer in the suburbs and the humans that didn't understand that they want the land too. I thought this was kind of stupid, and we ended up moving shortly after, and that was the end of my theatrical career pretty much.

I had a guidance counselor at the community college be convinced that I was going to have a career path in theater tech, and the whole world still fascinates me even if it's from a distance. One of my coworkers used to build sets at Karamu House and told me about how he'd start the designs on the way out of the dressing room so that by the time the actors were onstage, they were already in character. I'd never thought of that before.  I don't do plays very much, most of the time because they're kind of expensive and usually don't look super interesting and are sometimes terrible, but I do try to do at least one Shakespeare thing a year, because picnics and the Queen's English tend to go well together...

Alexandre Benois:

 

leon bakst

ivan bilibin

the cool of the day

The weekend felt longer than it was, scored random swank at garage sales in Lakewood, attempted to jump a friend's dead battery to find out later that it was just a dead car, stood outside in a suburban parking lot in the rain marveling at the kindness of strangers, before heading back to the neighborhood for a book discussion on Cannery Row which was good times all around, since I've loved Steinbeck since my teens and getting to have unpretentious and smart conversations about books is always welcome in my world.

The Saturday heat wasn't so much out of character, just the feeling of sun and concrete is overwhelming, but I walked the dog I was watching down to the lake where I waded into the who-knows-what water up to my ankles and she immersed herself when she wasn't trying to roll in the dead fish on the beach or make friends with the pit bulls tied to the tree. It feels too warm to cook sometimes, so I drink lemonade and glass after glass of water and pore through the pile of library booksale paperbacks, filling in all the blanks of my book collection with Kafka, Orwell, Huxley (the current state of affairs has made my political sentiments more dystopian by the day), fragments of Sappho, sundry epic poetry. The cat curls up on the couch and looks on with green eyes.

Sunday morning it is warm, and we're all tired, and the humidity messes with the tuning pegs and pickups of our instruments, I don't get the crunch I want, but I'm too slackerly to tweak the knobs too much and instead ponder thoughts and feelings and human frailties, thankful that any butterflies of feelings have long flown away. We celebrate a birthday at my parents' and I hang out with my younger cousins, talk politics with the bro-in-law, and gardens with the uncles as we celebrate the coming rain until I realize I've left the windows open.

Nothing's damaged, I walk the dog through the darkening streets in the cool of the day, thinking about edens, since everything feels like it's growing, the blue water in the distance, the swirl Van Gogh sky, the flecks of lightning insect sparkle on the grass, and the children riding tricycles on broken pavement. Her neighbors are drinking beer and showing off their guns. The house is finally cooled and I curl up with F. Scott Fitzgerald and defer the phone calls needing to be returned another day. I feel like I'm in love with summer rain like few other things.