Peter Jaques

There’s a lot of music in the house, and it’s an ideal place for a musician or anyone who’s inspired being around people being creative. We have no TV, and like it that way. We keep things neat & clean, but not obsessively so. We have a longhaired cat as well. Decent yard in front & a pretty, vaguely-landscaped area in back as well. Fireplace, gas stove, washer/dryer.

We’re a strictly vegetarian house. You can eat whatever you want outside, but no meat (or fish or chicken or dead animals of any kind) in the house. Yes, this is non-negotiable. (Dairy & eggs are fine, yes indeedy they are so fine.)

The room is available either Feb. 15 for sure, or possibly Feb. 1. It’s a sunny room with two windows, measuring about 10’x12’ with a small closet & hardwood floors. (I lived in that room for about two years & it’s really a nice room.) You can see pictures here. The available bedroom is the first one on the “bedrooms” link. Rent is $525, plus $525 deposit to move in.

We’re near 60th & San Pablo, in North Oakland. Here’s a map. 12 minute walk/5 minute bike to Ashby Bart, pretty close to Emeryville shops (including Trader Joe’s), close to I-80/I-580, public library, 72R bus to downtown Oakland/Richmond.

If you’re interested, let me know by emailing me from the contacts page. Thanks!

We drove across the Bay bridge to Nob Hill, where friend Katie (sadly, I may be inadvertently changing her name to protect the innocent) was just bidding farewell to her friend and leaving her a luscious hot pink labial impression (that means “lips,” people. It was fuchsia lipstick. Do I have to spell everything out? Please attempt to curb your perversion.) implanted upon her cheek. We picked her up, and we rolled.

Now I’ll seize upon this cliff-hanger moment in the suspence of the story thus far in order to describe the weather today. It was lovely. Really quite. It was indeed a dark and yes stormy day. The last towers of the Bay bridge impressed against a roiling grey sky, clouds obscuring Bernal Hill so it looked like someplace out of Middle Earth. The scary side close to Sauron’s lair—you know. You do.

Come on, you do. So anyway we arrive at a peculiarly crowded Ocean Beach. Both my friends promptly strip down to swimwear that would have been perfectly appropriate if it were 60 degrees warmer. I was asked to document their excursion into the waves with their respective new cameras. We march out to the sand, they doff their robes of silk & terrycloth & bolt into the crashing waves.

I fall initially behind, they’re moving too fast, can’t, keep, up but then I do & I’m taking their pictures while they laugh & scream in the surf. A concerned old lady approaches, asking, “excuse me are those your girls?” to which I respond, “well kinda, they’re my friends.” (My girls? Does she mean my hoes or something?) “You know it’s really dangerous out there, the undertoe. Kids have died out there.” “I guess that’s part of why I’m here, in case they need something.” “You couldn’t get there fast enough.” Ok my friends are both in their 30s. I think if they wanna go swimming on New Year’s Day 2006 in water cold enough to make my footbones hurt, I’m not gonna say they shouldn’t. So I basically tell the lady they’ll be fine, don’t worry. I got a quite disapproving look as she left.

They return—frigid of course yet practically 100% alive—and we eventually (they were remarkably leisurely for two freshly emerged from an ice bath into a cold misty bog wearing little bikinis) clamber into the car, where I realize that the lady on the beach thought these two 30 year old women were my daughters, and what a terrible father i was for letting them swim unattended in the Pacific. My girls. That’s what she meant.

We had a good laugh about that one.

Hungry, we found an open bar on Clement St. named the bitter end with greasy greasy batter-fried fish & chips with cole slaw that didn’t even have no dressing on it but that’s ok ‘cos there’s plenty grease already to go around. And they did have malt vinegar, the true & proper coating for beerbatter whitefish (or as Your Black Muslim Bakery #2 calls it, “whiting fish;” Mommy what’s “whiting?”) so they were fully redeemed. The coffee however was not so fortunate. They did pull off a nice Black & Tan effect with a layer of thick (and creepily so) cream atop the timid grey coffee.

The coffee also had a mysterious layer of oil on top. I drank it & yeah ok it sucked. Fish was greasy. Coffee sucked. Ok yeah all I ever do around here is complain.

Scintillating company though. Kristina, turns out, used to play Dungeons & Dragons & elfQuest (doesn’t that seem the proper capitalization?). Bonding moment. She also, inspired by Darryl Hannah’s performance in Splash!, knew she too would be a mermaid one day. It’s good to know that even sexy bellydancers are dorks.

Kristina eventually dropped me off at George & Lise’s annual New Year’s Day party, where I flirted & danced & even had real conversations with folks in this community I’ve long been kinda peripheral in. I actually feel close to the Balkan scene now, for the first time. Then around 1:15am, I struck out, on foot, for home, where I arrived 80 minutes later after a lovely, peaceful walk across the sleepy rain-cleansed East Bay.

so forgive me, it's been a week or so since my last confession. i last wrote shortly after arriving in chiapas i guess. well i loved san cristobal de las casas. i wanna move there. after i last wrote, tory & i found our way to a salsa club & i realized it was the first time i'd heard live music since being in mendocino balkan music camp two days before leaving the estados. i also realized celia cruz's "la vida es un carnaval" is a bit overplayed in latin america. thence after two meager margaritas for tory & a coupla cheap beers for me, we happened upon a little upstairs bar that felt like we were walking into a friend's party, it was so comfortable & packed with people & there was a trio performing which reminded me a bit of briana & john's group except that i've never actually seen THEM perform. it was turntable, electric violin, and guitar/vocals & i was so happy to hear weird music i'm not really sure whether they were good or not, but i suspect they were cos everyone was having fun. especially after the bartender (who clearly liked tory a good bit) started giving us mezcal shots to go with every drink we ordered.

so yah, we took a while to stumble home that night. on the way a guy stopped us, perhaps scottish judging by his accent, asking if we knew where zapateros or zapatias was, he couldn't quite remember the name, and he'd just escaped running from a cab driver who had attempted to abduct him to the police station because he'd tried to buy unspecified drugs from the cabbie. we didn't know, so we asked someone else who didn't know but pretended to & gave vague made-up directions, we made sure the guy thought he was going to be ok, and we sent him on his way. of course we still couldn't remember which way to stumble ourselves, so we took a cue from the other guy and guessed, and eventually managed to wake our very sweet hotelier at 3am to let us in.

the next day we lunched at an organic restaurant that makes its own yogurt & tofu & who knows what else & i loved it. tory would have loved it except for her hangover-induced nausea. then the market. ok it's beautiful. people make & sell amazing things in there. including, thankfully, little dolls of subcomandante marcos on keychains. but i have to say that tory & i have very different levels of interest and/or patience when it comes to shopping. i thought i was being indulgent & generous after an hour & a half, but after three hours i didn't want to see another beautiful, embroidered, hand-woven thing ever. luckily my eyes glazed over & then dimmed completely until i was in a sort of somnambulent sensory deprived stupor & tory just kinda prodded me toward the next shiny booth. i don't remember the rest.

the next morning i went to get money from the atm (where'd all my money go & where'd tory get all those beautiful embroidered hand-woven thingys? hmm...) and knew i'd won (i always feel like i'm winning when the slot machine er atm gives me money) when upon exiting the booth a brass band starts up. just like in Underground or Black Cat White Cat or something. my favorite part was the guy standing in front of rest of the band playing cymbals. everyone else is reading or inventing this complex arranged music & he's playing a cymbal crash every four beats or so & looking so completely focused & intent.

we also climbed the big hill (really big hill, so many steps and pilgrims on all of em) to the cathedral where there was a festival for something. the cathedral was packed utterly & the jesi on the walls were backlit with red & green neon. very tastefully done. outside there was marimba music and a full scale carnival wherein the most common thing for sale in the booths was olives. 10 pesos bought you a plastic cup full of olives. i opted for pancakes with orange marmalade while tory had a vodka & soda, no ice of course what are you crazy? she videotaped the marimberos a bit until being accosted by a couple of little boys intent on getting in her shot. of course she happily obliged & now is the proud owner of lots of footage of blurry digits, noses, & ears against a backdrop of spinning san cristobal carnival skyline.

in all i think i saw live music 10 times in san cristobal. that's a big part of why i wanna live there someday. and zapatista dolls. and atm machines that don't eat my cards (more on that later too).

ok oaxaca wasn't as exciting as tory had hyped it up (to me and herself) to be. i mean, yeah nice market, been there done that got the guaravera. art, too, and museums that were more beautiful than the art within. but the town felt kinda sterile in some way. couldn't really find the interesting things happening. it seemed a little like noe valley in SF, like everything was pretty but too carefully arranged & people were uptight you might put the ashtray back in the wrong place. nice cathedral though. we found a nice silversmith as well but by then i was panicking about money so i didn't buy a dang thing.

mexico city (reached via our second all night bus ride in three days) was, well, an experience difficult to encapsulate. arrived at 7:30 am at the apartment of the son of a friend of tory's dad's. he's an art collector & also a very strange man. we napped. we met him for lunch & he drew us a map with all the museum names in english so of course when we asked people on the street to interpret this vague impressionist bit of cartography, they of course knew no better than we did that "fine arts mus." equals "bellas artes". anyway so we finally found it & there were some intense murals by orozco, diego rivera, and some other famous dudes whose names i'm now embarrassed to say i've forgotten.

on arriving back at the apartment, we open the door to find a guy from san anselmo (the town where tory grew up) on the couch, and our host's brother sitting on the floor, panicked from a dizzy spell. i asked if perhaps he wanted some water, and he really thought that was a brilliant idea. i mean, he really was impressed & thought that was brilliant. so, i got him some. he couldn't wait to be in a doctor's care. ok, i'm just gonna come out and say it: the guy was either the biggest wuss i've ever met, or utterly crazy. i mean, he'd gone from acapulco (sea level) to DF (9500 feet) in a couple of hours, eaten questionable food on the street, then ascended 6 more stories to his brother's apartment, and he didn't understand why he might be light headed, couldn't think to get himself a glass of water, and thought he urgently needed to be in a hospital.

there, i said it.

his cousin came & picked him up and victor came back home. our hopes of going out on the town were dashed when victor informed us, ridiculously, that no one ever goes out at night in DF, it's too dangerous. hm, there are 24 million people in that city. some of them go out. some of them were in fact laughing on the street below as he told us this. but additionally his doorman gets off at 10pm & there's no way into the building (except for the way he'd suddenly remember to tell us the next day) after that. so we decided it'd probably be a fine idea to go to bed.

victor awoke us the next morning to drive us to a little mercado for breakfast, where tory spent ten minutes explaining to the kid that really she just wanted plain white yogurt, not strawberry, not full of sliced bananas, just yogurt. to go with the cereal she was gonna buy from the next door girl, his sister. then he caught the bus with us to the area of the anthropological museum, & left us with a strict schedule which would also include the DF MoMA, the castle, the National Museum, and heck something else too i think. We never escaped the Anthropological museum all day. 10am-7pm we were there. We did have an intermission in the museum infirmary (who woulda known) when tory doubled over in pain from cramps (hope she doesn't mind me telling y'all that but it was the high drama of the day). The woman in the infirmary was very sweet & gave a fairly thorough explanation to us of menstruation in spanish which at least served to increase my anatomical vocabulary if not my understanding. She also gave tory essentially some strong tylenol which didn't kick in for a long time. Such a long time that the doctora got excited about the possibility of giving tory a shot. Tory wasn't similarly excited so instead she just curled up in the back for an hour until she could walk again.

Three cups of coffee with dinner at the museum restaurant for me. Bad idea. I'll get to that in a minute. (wow i'm the master of cliffhangers this time around.)

Pouring rain. Taxi back to the apartment. Our last night in Latin America before Tory's 7am flight. She has an errand to make, i go with her & try my luck at the atm. Lost. Ate my card. It's 7:45pm Friday, the bank is so closed but there are people inside. I just want my card back. After much knocking, ringing, dramatic use of the international sign for "please", and of course asking the cleaning woman for intercession on our behalf, hey we learned SOMETHING from all those saint-loving Catholics;), finally a guy comes to the door & starts explaining that yes, in fact the bank IS closed (a point emphasized by the compelling metaphor that the DOOR is also closed, which is why i can't actually hear a word he's saying) & they can't do anything about the ATM no matter what time our flight out of the country is the next day, and would we please just go away. So we did.

Back to the apartment, where i realize i've finally gotten sick but what a strange illness. I'm dizzy & kinda feverish & have such delusions as: 8pm is a reasonable time for bed. Ok! I'm not proud of it, but I went to sleep my last night in Latin America at 8pm. & fevered dreams did I have, yea, & upstairs did they sing flamenco & stomp around & still fitfuly dreamt I on. & lo, swift like the rapture arrived 3:30 A. M., the time of awakening, and of packing all of mine holy crap into the damned backpacke of my torment, and of figuring out how in the hell to get to the Mexico City Airport by the unsaintly hour of 5, count em, 5 horas de la mañana, so that Santa Torita de Santos Anselmo y Rafael could catch her blessed nonstop flight home.

And yet there remains one final chapter of our story. Crossing the border from Guatemala to Mexico by land, as we did, you actually have contact only with Guatemalan officials, not with those handy Mexican officials who give you the even handier tourist cards you need in order to be able to fly out of the country. At 6:30am, after waiting in line for over an hour to get through the completely unthorough bag search to the Continental check-in desk (by the way i will never fly Continental again for reasons too dull to bother you with) I was informed that I wouldn't be able to leave the country without a stupid piece of paper, which I could get from Office 78 upstairs behind the Burger King (this part felt like William S Burroughs for some reason) but not till after the office opens at 7. Shouldn't have to pay for it, she said, since they don't give em out when you cross by land. (If, however, you Do get one & Lose it, it's $42 to replace before you can leave.) Fine for me, my flight wasn't actually till 11am, I'd just gone early to share one last cab with Santa Torita, but what about her & her 7am flight? Well of course I couldn't find her at that point, having left her in the Delta line, so I struck off alone in search of the stupidly elusive tourist card.

Office 78 didn't actually open till 8, & the man inside didn't care Why I didn't have the card, & insisted that I had to pay 210 pesos to get a new one (thankfully about half the $42 I'd have had to pay if I'd had one & lost it). The problem here is that, as I've mentioned, my ATM card was at that moment working its way through the small intestine of a closed Banamex machine on Avenida Insurgentes. Now Tory had kindly lent me another 200 pesos that morning to help get me home, which brought the total of money in my pocket, and indeed the total of money at my disposal, to 204 pesos, 6 pesos short.

God damn i'm being long winded. I was wily. I went through security to the gates. I joined a mob of people getting off a plane & went through Immigration as if I were just then arriving to Mexico, thereby procuring a tourist card compliments of the United States of Mexico. Out through customs, nothing to declare, out of the airport, back into the airport, back through security, back to the gate to wait for my flight & clean my trumpet.

& they never even asked for my tourist card when I was boarding.

Incidentally, Tory succeeded in catching her flight by breaking down in tears for 20 minutes in the little Immigration interrogation room, finally eliciting the pity of the heretofore hardened officer, who upon finally discovering compassion & kindness after a lifetime of cruelty & denying visas & kicking dogs, has now devoted himself to the rescue of abandoned &/or abused lizards & has a good chance of being sainted. Ok that's two jabs at the Catholic Church now & that one wasn't even funny. Probably earned me an extra 10 years in Purgatory. I hear there are lots of clarinetists in Purgatory.

shut up peter

what an anticlimactic ending, and i'm not even drunk

So um yeah i was trying to say how we woke this morning at 5am & took the boat (you can only get to Santiago de Atitlan by boat) back to Panajachel, whence we got a horrible breakfast & shelled out $30 each (yup 30 american dollars) to get a ride to the border, whereupon our until-then-very-helpful driver managed to stick us for $20 more as the "border crossing fee" supposedly paid to the border guards but for various reasons we're pretty sure he pocketed it. Once in Mexico we ended up having to change Quetzales to Pesos at a horrible rate because we were stuck, then i got stuck for 10 pesos by our first bus driver (my fault this time, i converted wrong)... finally, though we're back in North America & it feels good. actually this town reminds me a little of Italy or something, except for all the little revolutionary Zapatista dolls for sale on the street (this was the center of the 1994 uprising).

Oh yeah, hot showers & great pizza. We're happy.

they're closing the internet down now, gotta go.

love p

Yesterday we left San Salvador by bus, crossed the border (where I managed to get mildly scammed three times in about 10 minutes, losing a total probably of $6, but still frustrating to realize that I'm just not the most street smart person out there, for all my other formidable talents), hit Ciudad Guatemala, damn that place is intense--smog, hustlers, sprawl, apparently serious gangs as well--tried & failed to get Tory's return ticket changed from last Friday from San Slavador (i like that misspelling so i'm keeping it;) to the 31st from Mexico City (after repeated emails telling her that she could do that, the office said no, we don't fly out of Mexico City). While she was in the office getting dumped by Taca, I stood with our taxi driver outside, talking about marriage & divorce & sex before marriage, lemme tell you he has some strong opinions & wanted to know all about me-- had i had many girlfriends, had i had relaciones sexuales with them, will i get married, if i have kids would i ever consider divorce... He wasn't judgmental at all, just really interested. He was also really impressed when i said i made about $800/month, and similarly amazed that i pay $525 in rent.

Thus thwarted, we pressed on via campesino bus (no chickens on board, alas, but someone's parcel did picturesquely fly off the roof onto the highway) to Antigua. Off the bus there was the old familiar feeling of being hustled from every side. Much as I hate that (and reflexively say no to everyone without hearing a word they say), it did at least make me feel for the first time that I'm really traveling. That & finally using foreign currency & having to multiply & divide by 7.50 all the time... There was something about Colima & even San Salvador that felt too familiar. Probably partially due to using dollars & partially due to my expectation that all foreign countries should be as different from SF as Cairo, Jerusalem, & Istanbul are. Even Greece & Bulgaria, though in some ways familiar in that European "everything's almost familiar except the cars & boxes & streets are too skinny & tall", use different alphabets & no one smiles in Bulgaria;) All this is to say that I guess all my time living in the Mission has made Latin American culture familiar enough that I can forget I'm somewhere else entirely, perhaps just in Modesto.

Umm. Tangent. Anyway so before that we were in San Salvador for three nights & did very little. Stayed two nights with our friend Mauricio in his little basement apartment off his parents' really nice house in a pretty posh neighborhood. Parts of their house have no roof, by design, because you just don't need it (there are drains in the tile floors in those areas though) & extra airflow is much more important than hermetical seals. The architecture of the houses actually reminded me a lot of St. Croix when i was a kid.

We went to the mall (Mauricio's attempt to shut us up from our constant requests for good coffee was to take us the "The Coffee Cup", which sucked). We saw "21 Grams" subtitled in Spanish (which was actually helpful when the characters mumbled (or am i losing my hearing?)) at the "Foto Cafe", which actually DID have good coffee. Mary & Tory both came down with pretty bad digestive issues so we all went to the medical clinic & got them their antibiotics, & both are feeling much better now. It rained torrentially one night, Mauricio's roof leaked straight in & soaked a mattress, & i got some kinda cool photos of lightning.

before that we were two nights in a little hotel on the beach in La Libertad. the first night most of the hacienda folks were there so it was a nice cushy send off. ryder & lena & i played some music & we ordered food off a menu & didn't all have to eat at the same time & i think there weren't even fleas. (i think i haven't mentioned in email yet but my left ankle was one night at the hacienda devoured by spiders, fleas, and of course mosquitos & swelled up insanely for about a week, basically until yesterday. now it just itches.) Swam in the unpacified Pacific during a gorgeous lightning storm. Got locked out of the hotel grounds & had to jump the fence to get back in.

The last few days at the hacienda were eventful & hectic. We had a party which started with a procession from the mural, led by Ryder, Lena & me, enshrouded in a dingy mosquito net, cascading sweat & playing a funereal klezmer kolomeike. Ryder described it as cathartic, like breaking a fever. Several people asked what it meant, a question which we left mysteriously unanswered, because we hadn't really thought about that.

There were piñatas. Bloodthirsty kids. Griselda got punched in the eye for a dulce. The evening was calmer, just our closer commadres remaining. Rose & Shamita & Crystal & Melanie & i exited the guarded gate, crossed the highway, & played pool with the guys under the loving gaze of many swimsuited women on posters (was it love or lust i saw in that one girl's eyes?).

I don't know. i think there was lots more but i feel like i've been typing for hours & that my stories are getting increasingly dull (not that they were fascinating to start with). so i'll stop. we'll be here another night, then probably somewhere on lake atitlan, then perhaps quetzaltenango, then san cristobal (chiapas mexico), then oaxaca, then d.f. to see where the virgin mary appeared, then home, in just ten days, strange. i've never traveled so quickly...

anyway i have no phone number for the moment, nor text message access. but internet in antigua is fairly cheap so i'll check again tomorrow before we leave.

love p

also some of the gringas had created a dance to the following song:

once there was a candy store
business was so bad
asked my wife
what to do
this is what she said:

take zee can of gasoline
spread it on zee floor
take zee match
make zee scratch
no more candy store, hey!
(repeat last 3 lines 2ce)

(song courtesy of ryder, "obviously" if you know her)

by then the kids musta thought all english-speakers are demented, which i guess isn't that far from the truth...

then yesterday about half of us rose at 6am to head to izalco, whence we rode horses up the volcano of which i've thoroughly forgotten the name. these were, bluntly, some ragged caballos. at first most barely wanted to move, though a couple were a bit too eager. one of our crew, jen, was nearly tossed off a cliff when her galloping horse decided to plant her front hooves fast, & kick her back legs out at the following horse & rider. jen grabbed the neck of her steed & held on but managed to hit her throat on the saddle horn hard enough to require a trip to the hospital, as she was having trouble breathing. she's ok, back here again, but that sucked. luckily it was early in the trip & we had (pathetically enough) two escorts: the horse owner in a jeep, and three cops on foot (apparently "tour groups" here usually get police escorts to ensure safety; a bit creepy to see them lurking in the brush behind us at times). so jen was easily whisked away to the relative safety of the izalco clinic (though i've heard some unencouraging things about other hospitals here...)

anyway, i personally loved the galloping (after trading in my original nag, i got a pretty antsy steed), not only for the thrill but also because those were some damn hard saddles & the transition from cantering (whereupon yr butt slams hard against the saddle with every step) & galloping (which feels more like gently leaping 20 feet, gingerly touching down, then leaping again) was ever more comfortable.

we didn't actually completely climb the volcano unfortunately (probably because we were so gosh darn slow), but ended on an old lava flow dating from 1956 or 1963 (the guy said one date in spanish & the other in english) which also offered a lovely view of most of the country (hey it's small) & also the coast.

ok other highlights: i drank from a spigot what was described as (& i still hope to be) spring water, figuring we were high enough above the cities' water tables that it wouldn't be contaminated by the same horrible things that they dump directly into most of the water supplies. i also ate three pupusas de queso & frijoles with the pickled cabbage stuff which seemed not entirely sanitary but by then i was feeling invincible (hey i'd just ridden a grumpy but hurried horse up & down most of a volcano).

another highlight. after our descent & starved 4:40pm lunch, we visited a tiny church which was essentially the center of a santeria sect. the couple explained how the indigenas had once worshipped sun & wind &c, & when the conquistadores came, they'd essentially just placed intermediaries in there, one saint representing the sun, another the east wind, another corn, etc, & placed jesus above them all so they're technically christian, but they still have largely the same rituals as 600 years ago. they also served us a rice wine that tasted a little like homebrewed mead, lots of it.

today, i made a point of doing as little as possible, since i'm shall we say a bit sore, especially shall we say my ass. i painted a bit, sorted through the photos on my camera (oh i took some really nice shots at 70 miles per hour from the bus window), & now i'm emailing.

we'll be here another week & then tory & i strike off for guatemala & oaxaca. thanks for yr responses & i love you all. p

we're hoping (ok i'm hoping, i'm not sure the kids care, or even understood me when i tried to explain in spanish) to play for a puppet show here, as some other kids are making marionettes, other kids are writing a story (or 12, we'll see) & others are painting backdrops.

yesterday we worked on outlining the mural on the wall in preparation for painting to begin, but then today the rain stalled everything paintery...

el salvador is gorgeous, by the way. even just outside the airport. everything is lush & green. interestingly, there aren't many OTHER colors in the wild, like flowers etc, it's just all green hills. the hacienda is beautiful but a strange environment. the community isn't allowed into most of it, only the main meeting areas. there's a swimming pool & whole back area that are closed off. yet we gringos (actually mostly gringas) have free run of the place. feels kinda imperialistic. plus there was a massacre of 50 people here during the civil war, right in the courtyard where we eat dinner, and that pall hangs over the place a bit. but the only war now is between us, mosquitos, & amoebas, and folks seem acclimated to history (what are they gonna do, after all? there were so many damn massacres & atrocities, if every place became a shrine everyone would just have to move out of the country).

anyway i promised to play some music with some of the others here (lena & carolyn ryder cooley, for those of you who know them) so i don't wanna keep them waiting any more.

New York, as is its wont, has been glorious & yet I'm finding myself hibernating, once again feeling a cold passing through, becoming slightly numb this winter (even the locals complain of the chill), yet seeing lots to do in my life soon.

I'm thinking of living alone when i come back. I've never done it, except for housesitting Genie's place for three months (but that was HER place, still). I'd love to define a space, what would i do with complete control? I've lived so communally so long, it's a little too fascinating, probably sounds mundane & all, but i want my own damn pots (no more aluminum) & clean bathroom & i want to practice trumpet without worrying whether someone's home with me.

Shit, getting old.

In general, mindfulness, deliberateness. My friend Timothy, who i've stayed with for the last 10 days, composes & records all the time. He has his little studio, & percussion & flutes & guitars &c, & creates.

I've long had this disdain, loathing even, of money. Seen it as the crystallized abstraction of denial--those without money can't get the food they need, while unbought food rots. All our necessities are hoarded & only ransomed at great cost, as the money we pay with is bought with our time, our labor, our abdication of self-determination in favor of profits for our bosses. Money always has seemed a terrible bludgeon, a tool to keep us from what we need & to ensure the power of the pursekeepers.

Timothy, sincere, ribald Buddhist, sees money as a fluid force to be given freely & to be asked freely & without shame. We need it to survive, true, but it also enables us to do many things, including be generous.

For completely unrelated reasons, I'm considering a day job. Something fairly disposable, un café peut-être, perhaps 20 hours a week. I've been feeling a bit one-dimensional, & not just because I'm skinny. I spend all day practicing or writing or transcribing music, talk to musicians on the phone, go to rehearsal or a recording session at night, hang out with musicians over beer (whiskey rakija ouzo pernod damn i've been drinking a lot here). Notice the pattern? I mean, I'm all for immersion & devotion, but i'd like to be able to carry on a regular conversation as well;) Perhaps I'm romanticizing, but the prospect of joking with people waiting for lattes seems mind-expanding. Plus i'd get free coffee.

And some structure couldn't hurt either. A schedule might just kick my ass a little.