California Fever

Day 32

I'm not going to use page 37 of a book as a prompt for today's post.  Instead I'm going to go straight to the source--Patti's blog, 37 Days.  Yesterday she wrote a remarkable post entitled, Forever Hold Your Penguin Dear.  It's a long post, but I guarantee that reading it will be time well-spent.  So grab a big cup of coffee or tea, get comfy in your chair and get ready to think about death...in a new way.  You might think, my god, how depressing--I don't want to read or think about death.  But I assure you, you do, because examining death in the way she's written about it will make you more fully appreciate your life.

I've been thinking a lot about car accidents lately, and Patti's post is about the victim of one.  Many years ago (25 to be precise), I lost a 17-year-old stepbrother to a car accident.  (My brother and I had two stepbrothers via our stepfather.  He and our mother divorced many years ago.)  Thinking about Taylor's accident brought the memory of our stepbrother's death back to me, and I commented to that effect on Patty's post because what she wrote reminded me of it again. 

I remember seeing him in a coma in the hospital (the same hospital where Taylor is now).  He was a wrestler and very muscular, and his body hadn't been damaged.  His injuries were to his brain, so he didn't look critically injured.  He'd been thrown from the car and hit his head on something--a tree stump or large rock, I think.  His brain was quite swollen, and although there was a respirator pushing breaths into his body, it was clear the moment I saw him in the ICU that he wasn't there.  If ever I'd wondered up to that point about the concept of a soul or spirit, that moment crystallized my thinking.  Because whatever life had resided in his body, it was no longer there even though he was still technically alive.  His body seemed lifeless and soul-less.  (He died a few days later.) 

I remember the funeral and I remember that it was outdoors, but I don't remember where that place was--just what the setting looked like.  Shortly after the funeral, I got dizzy--really dizzy.  Like dizzy all the time dizzy.  I had vertigo, and I had it bad.  Louise Hay's Heal Your Body says dizziness and vertigo mean "a refusal to look."  Death is some scary shit, especially when it happens to someone young.

I was working in Mill Valley in Marin County at the time, at a boutique downtown.  I remember feeling quite overcome by the vertigo, and wondered how long it would last.  (I can hear you medical junkies out there yelling, "Why didn't you go to the doctor?!")  :)  About three weeks later (and yes, I still had the vertigo), I suddenly remembered that there was a Catholic church a couple of blocks from the boutique.  Although I don't believe in Catholicism (and probably never did), I do occasionally find solace in sitting in an empty church during times of stress.  (And it can be any church, not just a Catholic one.)  The church had a small parking lot with a chain link fence around it.  I parked there and went inside to sit quietly for awhile.  As I was walking to my car afterwards and about to put the key in the door lock, the keys suddenly flew out of my right hand and landed a few feet behind me.  It sort of freaked me out, and I remember looking around to see if anyone had witnessed what I'd just experienced.  (There was no one else around.)  And then I sort of laughed, and as I bent down to pick up the keys, I felt a sense of peace wash over me.  Because it felt like he was there--it felt like he was letting me know that he was okay wherever he was. 

And the fact that it was keys that flew out of my hand wasn't lost on me.  It seemed a sign of sorts, and I remember the voice in my head saying loudly, "THIS is the key."  I wasn't sure to what, or even what that meant, but I remember unlocking the car and just sitting in the driver's seat for a few minutes to let the experience sink in.  I tried not to analyze it, but just feel it.  It felt like it meant that the key was to listen to my intuition--that it would tell me what I need, when I need it.  It also felt like the message was to not fear death--that whatever is on the other side isn't to be feared.

I drove down the street to work and I'd been on the job a couple of hours when it suddenly hit me:  the vertigo had disappeared.

Now go, read the incredibly insightful, deeply truthful Forever Hold Your Penguin Dear.

A Day in the Life 1975

The Patty Hearst connection...

And just for Will, this audioblog can be suscribed to at iTunes with this URL:

http://mmusvi.audioblog.com/rss/patty_hearst.xml

My first podcast...HA!

1978

I'm just going to say this once:  Tom Cruise is starting to really creep me out.  I've never been a fan (although I will admit to liking him in Jerry McGuire...but that's more because I really enjoyed the movie, having worked with sports agents in an earlier chapter of my life) but now I'm starting to be really repulsed by the guy.  But maybe that's because I'm so sick and frigging tired of hearing about him and Katie.  And Tom?  Dude, lose the bangs, will ya?  It's just really creepy seeing a 40-something guy with a maniacal grin on his face wearing bangs that look more appropriate on a 6-year-old.

Here's what else is freaking me out.  The fact that my mother seems to be suddenly unclear on the concept of a press junket.  It's become impossible to have a conversation with her that doesn't include her bringing up a celebrity at some point.  Seriously.  No really, seriously.  You can bring up any topic and she'll find a way to work in something she's heard a celebrity say on a talk show or in an interview.  Cancer?  World peace?  Famine?  She'll find a way to link it back to something she's heard on "Entertainment Tonight" or "Access Hollywood."  So I can't remember how we got on the subject of Tom and Katie during a phone call the other day, but I was being snarky about it and Mom got kind of huffy.  She said she's seen Katie do several interviews and she seems genuinely in love.  MOM!  It's called P.R.!  She honestly believes that whatever persona a celebrity presents to a television audience is the real deal.  There's no countering that.  She believes what she believes.

Since I have nothing remotely interesting to post this morning, here's my Dan Aykroyd anecdote for those of you who asked for it.  I warn you, it'll be a real let-down, since I didn't meet him.

Some of my oldest friends are musicians.  There are two guys I met (separately) in 1978 who are still good friends of mine.  This is about one of them.  When I met him, he was playing in the teensy town I was living in in Humboldt County.  (I would describe my address at the time as "the blue house"--that's how small it was.)  My new friend was living in Eugene at the time.  A year or so before, they'd filmed "Animal House" in Eugene.  He told me a story about performing in Eugene one night and having a guy tugging on his pant leg while he was onstage.  The guy doing the tugging was John Belushi.  He wanted to meet and talk to my friend, because he liked his singing and music.  He didn't really know much about Belushi because he rarely saw "Saturday Night Live" since they were always gigging on Saturday nights.  Anyway, Belushi and my friend hit it off.  So he started hanging out with Belushi.  He'd go over to the house Belushi had rented in Eugene while he was shooting "Animal House" and he'd take with him lots of albums from his world-class roots music record collection, turning Belushi onto all kinds of people.  Next thing you know, Belushi and Aykroyd decided to form "The Blues Brothers."  When I met this guy in the summer of '78, Belushi and Aykroyd were recording the Blues Brothers album.  My friend said Belushi would call him from the studio and play him cuts off the album.  I listened to all of this and thought:  well, it makes a great story...but could it really be true?  And then the album came out.  It was called "Briefcase Full of Blues" and there was a dedication on the back...to my friend.  He has now spent the past 27 years stuck with the moniker "The Original Blues Brother." 

To support the album, Belushi and Aykroyd went on tour, including a stop at the Concord Pavilion.  I'd seen the show listed, but had no desire to see it.  After all, I sort of had a beef with the whole idea.  Here was someone who had basically copped my friend's act (and no, my friend doesn't do cartwheels on stage) and made a killing with it.  Yes, it could be argued that they exposed lots of people to the blues who otherwise wouldn't have opened their ears to it.  But still.  So I was sitting at work the day after that Concord show and the phone rang--it was my friend.  (I lived about half an hour from Concord.)  He said, "What are you doing?  I'm in Concord.  Belushi and Aykroyd flew us (the Crayboys, as I called the Cray band in those days) down for the show on their Lear jet.  I'm in Aykroyd's suite.  Can you come hang out for ahwile?"  I knew I could slip away if I wanted to, since I was working for a family business.  He gave me the hotel info and then told me how to bypass security and come up to the room via a back entrance.  So about 90 minutes later, I knocked on the door of Aykroyd's suite and my friend answered.  They'd all been up way late the night before, partying and having a good time.  My friend had the drapes closed and he was sitting there in the darkened living room of the suite watching cartoons.  He'd slept on the sofabed; Aykroyd was still asleep in the bedroom.  I hung out for about an hour and then grew bored, so I split.  The next time we talked, my friend said, "I wish you'd stayed longer so you could have met Aykroyd.  He's a nice guy."  So there it is, my almost brush with Dan Aykroyd.  Told you it was nothing.  But that's really all just background to tell you this:

My boyfriend was this friend's drummer for seven years.  That's how we met.  I've often joked with my boyfriend that I think destiny led me to cross paths with this friend in 1978 just so I could hook up with the love of my life in 1995.  You just never know where these connections might lead.  This friend will be playing in San Francisco next month.  I can't wait to see him and hear him sing and play again.  It's been a long time.  And no matter what happens in our lives or how many miles separate us, he'll always be one of my dearest friends.

But that's next month.  Today we're going to hook up with the other musician I befriended in 1978.  I phoned him about 10 days ago and left a message, telling him that we're in California.  But he'd just left for a week in Spain.  Three weeks ago they'd been on tour in Brazil.  But we finally connected a few days ago.  And even though we hadn't talked in four or five years--and haven't seen each other in eight--it was like we picked right up where we left off.  I picked up my cell phone the other day and heard that familiar, "Hey" (because that was always our one syllable greeting to each other, since we knew the other's voice) and it was like we'd been talking to each other on a regular basis all this time.  He plays with this guy and they're playing in Sacramento today.  So today I get another moment of reconnection that harks back to a random encounter in 1978.

The Timing Gods

Let me tell you a story...  Once upon a time (early 1997), when the boyfriend and I lived in Portland, one night I decided to go to a show by a Bay Area blues artist.  Boyfriend couldn't go because he had a jazz gig, but he dropped me at the venue (a club he'd played dozens and dozens of times with several different bands) and said he'd be back to pick me up.  When he came back after his gig, the show was still going on.  I had scored a table right in front and was sitting there by myself.  (I spent years going to shows by myself--I'm not the type to sit at home if I don't have someone to go with me.)  Boyfriend spotted me, but being the shy type he is, he didn't want to walk right in front of the stage.  So he went out the back door by the bar, walked through the patio behind the stage, re-entered through the side door at stage left and joined me. 

This is where I should interject that all evening, the guitarist/singer (it was his band) seemed a bit peeved with his drummer.  He kept turning around while they were playing and giving the guy dirty looks.

This was an artist I'd seen perform many times when I lived in the Bay Area, but I hadn't heard him play in years.  Suddenly the guitarist noticed the boyfriend and was all smiles.  I looked at the boyfriend like, "You know him?"  Turns out they didn't exactly know each other, but they'd been on the same bill a time or two.  After the show, the guitarist made a beeline for the boyfriend and wanted to chat with him, so they moved to the bar to talk.  He said as soon as he saw the boyfriend walk in, he remembered how good he was.  And when we walked out of the club that night, boyfriend had a new gig.  He spent most of 1997 touring with this guy.  They toured a lot--all over the U.S., several Canadian cities, over to Europe (London, Paris, Amsterdamn, Hamburg, etc.)  There were fun gigs, too:  Central Park, Buddy Guy's blues club in Chicago, Tanglewood, a whole bunch of blues festivals in the summertime, etc.  But by year's end, he'd tired of the road.  They were never gone for really long stints--I think three weeks was the longest they'd go out.  But he grew weary of being home for only two or three days at a time.  Plus, the rest of the band lived in the Bay Area, so he always had an extra leg coming and going--flying to San Francisco from Portland to meet up with them and then flying from San Francisco to Portland to get back home.  But he and the guitarist had a lot of good times (and some wild times!) and he's still a friend.  Our clubowner friend in St. Thomas brought the guitarist to St. Thomas for a weekend of shows in late 2000.  Just him, not his band.  And the boyfriend and some others backed him.  It was good to see him and to hear him play with the boyfriend again.

But that night in 1997 when we walked out of that very familiar venue in Portland with the boyfriend having just been given the drummer's job if he wanted it, we were a bit awed.  It was one of those freaky moments where you realize timing is everything...and wonder if there aren't hands of fate or destiny or something at play in your world.  The same thing happened last night...

Having done some research before we decided on Davis and made our move, we were well aware that the jazz scene in Sacramento is nearly non-existent.  Yes, there are some players and a few venues that occasionally host jazz, but boyfriend knew that if he wanted to do jazz club work, it might be tough to find in Sac.  For weeks now, we've been scouring the club listings in the Sacramento News & Review (the free, alternative weekly).  We've noticed that Thursday nights seemed to be the best.  And there was one particular club that seemed to be the only club dedicated to jazz all week, so we thought that might be the best bet.  But for several Thursdays running, something kept coming up.  We still hadn't make it over to Sacramento to hear any music...until last night. 

On the way home from San Francisco on Wednesday evening, we decided to bypass our exit and drive into downtown Sacramento.  It had been years since I'd been there and boyfriend isn't familiar with it at all.  We simply wanted to time the trip.  It takes 15 minutes, tops.  We'd driven around downtown a bit the other night, so when we decided to head out for the jazz club last night, we knew right where it was and how to get there.  It's right downtown, across the street from Memorial Auditorium (where I saw Sly & the Family Stone in concert when I was 19).  We found a parking place easily and walked across the street.  There appeared to be two clubs side-by-side...or were they two rooms for the same venue?  We walked up to the bouncer working the club that had music going on and asked him.  He said they were separate venues--that the club we were at featured blues and had a small cover charge and that the club next door has jazz and there was no cover.  We thanked him and said we were going to check out the jazz club (which was our destination anyway), but that we'd be back (even though we knew we wouldn't because the blues band was playing the kind of blues that really gets on the boyfriend's nerves).  :)

We began walking toward the door of the jazz club, but as we looked through the windows we saw (and heard) that there wasn't any music being played and the place was EMPTY.  This is how empty it was:  there were three people working behind the bar, one single woman at one end of the bar, a single guy at the opposite end of the bar and one couple in between.  And it's a nice club.  There was a guy with an acoustic guitar setting up his amp on stage and there was a not-very-nice drum kit on stage.  This was clearly not the jazz group they'd advertised as being slated to play there last night.  Boyfriend, being the least pushy person you'll ever meet but trying to force himself to meet local musicians, walked up to the guitarist to introduce himself.  They chatted briefly and when the guitarist heard he was a jazz musician, he said, "Well let me introduce you to D.--he's the owner."  Um, okay.  So he walked the boyfriend over to the end of the bar and introduced him to D. and they shook hands and boyfriend introduced me and I shook hands with D. and then we had a seat at the bar.

D. explained that there'd been a mix-up and the band that was supposed to play last night (the same band is playing there tonight) hadn't shown up.  So he'd called his friend C. (the guitarist) who fills in when he needs him.  C.'s from Barbados and seems quite nice.  After much amp tweaking and battery replacement, C. finally sat down to play.  By then another couple had come in and taken one of the tables and an older gentleman had taken a seat next to us at the bar.  But the two single people who'd been at the bar had left, so it was a wash.  Finally C. began to play and immediately asked the boyfriend if he'd like to join him.  I knew the boyfriend really didn't want to play.  The drum kit looked like shit and C. was playing rock and pop cover tunes, and that's fine, but it wasn't the jazz we'd expected to hear.  Boyfriend looked at me and said under his breath, "How can I get out of this?  Okay, I'll play one tune."  He waited until C. had finished his first song and then he walked onstage.  D. was in the back room when they began playing the next song, but as soon as he walked out mid-tune he walked over to me, leaned across the bar and said, "Man!  He sounds SWEET!"  I explained (as I often do, because the boyfriend HATES to promote himself) that the boyfriend is the most unassuming guy you could possibly meet, but he has world-class talent.  D. kept exclaiming over his playing and then said, "I've gotta get him in here!"  And then he said, with a bit of an awed smile on his face, "Sometimes people and things come into my life and I don't understand it...but I don't question it."  I laughed and said I was just thinking the same thing, as in "How does this stuff happen to us?"  D. and I chatted a bit--he wondered how we came to be there that night.  I gave him a super-condensed "just spent five years in the Virgin Islands...just moved to Davis..." version.

Boyfriend kindly played several tunes with C. (we felt bad that the place was so empty) and then took his leave and rejoined me at the bar.  D. immediately  pulled up a stool to join us and began telling the boyfriend how he'd like to give him a regular weekly gig if he'd like to have one...and how he'd even round up all the other players to join him...and wondered if we could come back on Saturday night when their "All-Stars" are playing so he could meet all the best players...and that he'd probably be able to sit in and play, etc.  Boyfriend was like, "Sure!  Love to!"  And when we said our goodbyes about 11:30, we were all of us (D., the boyfriend and me) smiling over what an odd bit of timing had just happened.  Of all nights for us to finally go to that club--to pick the one night when a band hadn't shown up.  Once again, the timing gods have smiled on us.

Volvo envy

Yesterday afternoon the boyfriend and I were having a total power-lounge day.  I was still in my sweats, sitting with my feet on the ottomon, lazily going through the Sunday papers while he watched a golf tournament on TV.  We have our front door open pretty much all the time (there's a screen door).  Suddenly we heard a car door shut and it sounded fairly close.  We craned our necks to see out the door and saw this:

We talk about touchstones in life.  This is a major touchstone for my boyfriend.  When I first met him, he owned a 1963 Volvo 544.  (This is a '61.)  His was tan and had maroon leather seats.  He LOVED that car...and he's kicked himself many, many times over having gotten rid of it.  He's owned several cars since then, including a sweet '67 two-tone (turquoise with white leather roof) Caddy that he bought from his bluesman buddy and named Betty.  He's kicked himself over gettting rid of her, too.  (Riding in Betty was like riding a couch down the freeway.  That car seemed HUGE.)

When the golf tournament ended, I grabbed the remote and said it was my turn to find something to watch.  I quickly stumbled onto the end of a Wayne Dyer presentation on PBS re his book "The Power of Intention."  I haven't read the book, although I've heard it's good.  Wayne was listing his 12 key points while wrapping up the show.  No. 2 was "Think from the end."  In other words, imagine yourself already having that which your heart desires.  Boyfriend pointed out that everything Wayne was saying is said in the Bible.  (His father's a pastor, but boyfriend no longer goes to church.)  I said I realized that, but that Wayne was saying it in MY language.  :)

Eventually there were three or four people standing around the Volvo.  The hood was up and they were trying to figure out what was wrong with it.  I suggested to the boyfriend that he go out and see if he could help, since he knows the car.  Then I added, "Why don't you ask them if it's for sale...you never know..."  (Not that we have any extra car-purchasing money right now.)  He kept glancing out at the car.  Finally he said, "I'm going to go water (our vegetable plants)."  But I knew he really just wanted to sidle over to car to get a better look. 

I saw him talking to the people by the car.  It turned out one of the women owned it.  When he returned, he said she definitely wants to sell it and already had little slips of paper printed with the info on it.  He took one.  He said the interior is in great shape, which is pretty remarkable for a car that's 44 years old.  He told me the price range she's looking for--it would be doable for us, if we could just get some work going soon.  She said there'd been a bunch of classic cars at the park around the corner, including about four or five like hers.  It's too bad we didn't know that.  Boyfriend would have been practically orgasmic if he'd found himself surrounded by that many 544's.  Eventually we saw a tow truck show up to haul it away...but I wonder if that's the last we've seen of it...

Synchronicity

It has always fascinated me, the way people don't talk to one another.  A lot of times they don't listen either.  Like two radio stations tuned to different stations, shouting over each other across a flat empty yard.  That might be the thing that started me playwriting, how fast people stick to their own agenda.  How they never say what they mean, how I don't, how the world teaches us not to.  ~ Sight Hound, Pam Houston

I possess very few books at this stage of my life.  I've given away nearly all of my books over the years, through countless moves and travels.  I've kept only a handful, some signed by their authors at readings.  One of those is Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston.  It was her first book of short stories.  My copy was signed at a tea in San Anselmo, where I heard her read from it when it was first published.  That book has traveled a lot of miles with me since the early 90's.  A few years ago, I learned that Pam Houston was teaching at UC Davis, but I'd forgotten that fact in the blur of our sudden move. 

The other evening, I went out for a little stroll through the downtown area.  There's a Borders about 3-1/2 blocks away and a store specializing in mysteries two blocks from here.  A couple of blocks beyond the mystery bookstore is a lovely independent shop called The Avid Reader.  When I walked by their windows the other night I noticed several books on display advertising upcoming author readings.  The next one was with Pam Houston.

I went to hear Pam read last night.  When I walked into the store, she was standing near the cashier, greeted me with a smile and said, "Hello again."  I don't know her, but was struck by her choice of words because I thought, "You have no idea..."  She was there to read from her novel, Sight Hound.  She said she'd had a book launch party last January at UC Davis (where she's the Director of Creative Writing) and has traversed the country on a book tour in the ensuing months.  She said it was good to be back to read for her hometown crowd again.  I enjoyed her reading, purchased a copy of the book and stood in line to have it signed. 

She'd made enough spiritual-type references in her between-excerpts banter to lead me to think that she might appreciate it if I told her how her first book has traveled all over with me, how it's one of the few books I still own, how I just moved to Davis a couple of weeks ago and how I learned she would be the first author I'd have occasion to hear in my new hometown.  She groaned sweetly and said, "Aaaah, that's a good sign!"  She wrote a lovely inscription in my book and ended it with "Welcome to Davis!"  (She remembered the tea in San Anselmo and told me the proprietor of that shop has since passed away.)

The Davis Enterprise is an afternoon newspaper.  I've been reading the want ads daily.  I've seen a handful of jobs listed that I could apply for--none that I'd want, but several I could do.  Today's paper contained a new ad.  That's right--they're looking for help at The Avid Reader.

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Pam was handing out brochures last night for The Tomales Bay Workshops.  Here's a link in case anyone is interested.