Indian Summer - the water poured over us.
Into our basements, through cracks in the roof.
Holes into the basement after
Ida dropped by.
Each night another visitor.
A dream on a train in Poland, or maybe Italy.
Where was our connection?
Lost.
Bags of groceries, gnocchi for dinner.
But where are we taking them?
Where are we staying?
Doesn't matter.
There is a junk shop, selling old wares, this and that from the second war, disgarded treasures.
Old clocks, a watch, an old Nazi pin...
In other words our whole lives, said Caroline
Another dream, back in the supermarket, too many people.
They are selling everything.
The shopping is consuming our minds.
Even animals for sale.
I walk through the back, more and more pets, a young cat, a misfit dog greeting me, sad, another homely cat looking at me, letting me pet her, see her, be with her, new friends.
On the summer days passed into fall.
The kids are not quite back into school.
But the parents are teaching.
There's still a week or so left for them before school in Manhattan and Westwood.
Saturday, we journeyed out to Queens to meet the teenager for some tunes:
"Summer will take place Knockdown Center’s backyard space, “The Ruins,” across the last weekend of August, Saturday the 28th and Sunday the 29th, 2021, featuring headline performances by NYC post-punk icons ESG, and Canadian dance-pop favorite Jessy Lanza, and specially selected daily lineups for a cross-genre party that pays honor to club music’s past, present, and future.Joining the legendary Bronx pioneers ESG on Saturday’s lineup will be an exciting group of young performers that span pop, hip-hop, and R&B, including: rising L.A. synth-pop duo Magdalena Bay; Minneapolis-based songwriter, rapper, and poet, Dua Saleh; Philadelphia’s beat innovator Body Meat; and wildly prolific rapper Pink Siifu, performing with DJ Ted Kamal and special guest appearances from members of associated crew GKFAM."
We sat on hammocks and lolled about, looking at the storm clouds, dancing and playing and dancing and looking and listening, new tunes and feelings. Jessy sang "never ending story" And the music whirled through us.
ESG pumped us up, base slopping, bodies moving.
You, you are no good.
Whirling us into a fury.
And Ida moved to New Orleans.
Messages and poems from Judson service Sunday:
"For Your Meditation When you walk through the storm hold your head up high, and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet silver song of a lark. Walk on through the wind, Walk on through the rain, though your dreams are tossed and blown. Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, And you’ll never walk alone. You’ll never walk alone. – Oscar Hammerstein II"
"Modern Testimony
TRUTH IN SMOKE, “A Bike Ride” Aaron Waldron
"This poem was inspired by a divine experience I had while smoking my pipe. Life sometimes is like riding a bike. I had water, cushion, and shades. Tires full of air with a lubed chain....A tunnel vision of purpose and meaning. I appreciated the struggles and achievements along the way but I could taste the top. And it tasted salty but I wanted it more than anything in that moment. Reaching the top of this hill was a personal victory witnessed by others. I was proving to myself that I was more than just a bike rider. I died half way up to be reborn at the top. With twitching legs and short breathe: I did it."
Ida was vising Sunday.
Hurricane seaso, floods.
Water pounding as I rode over the bridge to meet Boyd and company at the Magician…
Talk through Glasgow and the crazy moment we’re in now.
What will the next COP be like?
Will we get it together?
Will we learn?
Can we slow the means of production?
Can we slow the world enough for any of us to remain?
Rode back from Essex street, over the Manhattan Bridge, to holy Brooklyn,
in the rain as the subways flooded.
Returned to aflooding house.... lots and lots of water..lots and lots of leaks...
My old college Cafe Reggio poster destroyed.
Hello Ida. Nice to meet you.
Cracks in the ceiling, with water pouring it.
Our room flooded, with water pouring into our bedroom.
The walls let water into our basement, damaging property.
We are going to have to repair the roof and walls of the house.
Still they want to develop the Gowanus.
Still they want to develop more along the toxic waterfront.
By Thursday, things were drying up.
Hunting for the perfect T shirt.
The city was still alive.
Its luminous charactors, still out, looking wonderful.
The Go Go's shirt was too small.
Back to Greg, I rode, chatting away with my buddy on the stoop.
The next morning,
The little one was ready to see a friend from camp.
Out to Baltimore, we whirled listening to song after song.
"she worked in a factory....
one day she gets her final pay and then she goes away ..."
Song after song.
Rainbows by the Moldy Peaches.
"You gotta have rain to have rainbows..."
Murry.... tells me stories about
Kimya Dawson's daughter Panda growing up singing with mom.
We're all growing up singing, Ms Robinson, Don't You Want Me, Don't Go Back to Rockville, American Pie... on and on, stopping for terrible food in Maryland.
Driving across the Susquehanna River, listenning to
Philosophy of the World by the Shaggs.
"Kurt Cobaine loved them," says the teenager.
"Forever yellow skies" by the Cranberries.
"I can see the yellow skies..... see you again... i my dreams... i remember the morning light... forever i'll be holding you..."
Its the most luminous music ever, says the teenager.
Monday is Monday is Delores' birthday.
Onward we drive through country roads, more songs, more stories, winding past an old airplane in a field, cows, a victorian, through the suburbs to dropoff.
See you Sunday kid.
Drop me a line if you need an early pickup.
I think they'll be fine.
3 PM on the way to see Mom, another three hours in the road with
Simone de Bouvoir and Jean Paul Sartre in Paris, through stories of existentialism and women and subjectivity and Marxism and a new conversation, Mozart and Contemporaries accompanying me, lone keyboard unpacking the workings of the mind.
Mom and I sat on the patio chatting away about it all.
Summer still here, the yard in full bloom.
Saturday, brought me back to Brooklyn and out to the beach with Caroline and babs and karen and jean francious and greg and emma and waves, lovely, warm water... all day.
Splashing warming, lulling us, drinking a pimms cup chatting with babs about the zen of surfers, surfing, riding a wave, being with a wave and the water and gravity and light splashing on the water, forever and ever in that ocean feeling, waves crashing into sand into nothingness. None of us are here very long.
And then back to the city.
More Bands at the KGB bar stoop.
If we can get there from from the beach at 430 out to the city, 85 E. 4th Street.
Sun splashed bodies, riding looking at the water, daydreaming, off into the night, the A train, takes us there, without a glitch, like magic.
Just in time for the Stoop Soiree with Dodi, of the Cannibal Girls, and Johnny of Flunt,
And guitar player from Clovis,
hosted by Tony Perrottet,
with Belly Dancing by Amanda...
Opera,
Lyrics poems
And so much more.
Welcome Dodi and Johnny in an avante guarde extravaganza!!!! says Tony.
The sound is off but they are wondrous.
Dodi on bass, Johnny on guitar on the steps as audience drinks cheap bubbly.
Johnny on bass as Dodi sings "Launderette" by Vivian Goldman, her hands in motion, performance artist, singing about her blue jeans jostling...whirling.
"I wanted ten pence for the dryer,
That was how we met...
I can't complain.
We went down the drain.
Seems like I can't get away from you.
Even in the launderette.
Now my socks to your socks in the dryer
And your jeans run into my shirt...."
Whoop... the audience applauds.
More and more people stop to listen on 4th street.
More applause.
Over Japanese food and beer and saki, we unpack the show next door.
You were great Dodi says someone walking by.
Johnny's parents tell us stories about an 18 hour dinner party,
starting a 2 PM, ending god knows when.
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