Big Nights

Have wanted to write so many things this week. So many things that it has become difficult to write anything. You know? It kind of bottlenecks at my fingertips. Actually, it never makes it close to my fingertips, rather it bottlenecks at the moment when the synapses fire and it all just jams up in my brain. I try to will myself to go to the computer and it seems my ass is made of lead. But I think I've figured it out. I think I'm fucking exhausted. How, you may ask, did this happen? I was so damned busy all month...sometimes feels like I've been busy for years. Though I know the truth, that I take breaks when I can or need to, but not always, but the truth, the truth...is that it is my own brain that exhausts me. Not as much as it once did, but enough. Enough. So much so that I attribute the strange projectile vomiting incident on Saturday night in Bellingham to overtiredness. I was fine all Saturday and drove down with Rascall Tallulah, then met up with Rascalls Tom and Jeff and Jeff's non Rascally, but rascally, if you get my drift, wife, Courtenay. We went and had some Thai food, I ordered Tom Kai Gai, which I eat all the time, and it was tasty, and within a half an hour was puking my guts out behind the theatre. Grrrross. Couldn't play in the first show of the night and scraped through the first 15 minutes of the second show, then slept aaaaaaaaaaaaalll day Sunday, except during the Oscars, which were the perfect speed for my tender brain and body. Now I seem to be fine, if still a little tired. I have no explanation for the disgusting happening except for my body's remarkable way of making me stay still. I should learn to get on top of that before my body has to shut itself down.

I had an odd and kind of emotional experience on Friday night. I was out with some friends at the Marble Arch nightclub, (weird in and of itself because I NEVER go out dancing anymore, but fun because I ran into lots of people I hardly see), and on my way back to my car a woman stopped me. She was clearly quite mad, (like a hatter, as opposed to angry), and desperate and something about her made me stop. She had long, thick hair, and good teeth, and a full, fleshy face, but she wore no shoes, only sport socks, still some white on the tops, but black as night on the soles, luckily still in tact. She had on a cotton dress and a man's tweed blazer and was terrified. Her eyes were so so green and bright, she'd had highlights in her hair, once. She asked me for money, of which I have none, and a ride, which I couldn't find it in myself to provide, and then she asked me for a hug. I am who I am and I hugged her. She started to cry. Have you ever heard the noise a cat makes when they are watching a bird? This primal chirping...that's how her crying was. High and fraught with fear. She clung to me so hard and cried into my jean jacket. She embarked on a tale I could not follow, something hysterical about her friend getting killed at the hotel, and now they were after her, or something. I just couldn't hear her through the shallow, fast breaths and plaintive moans. I had to pry her off of me and stood there while she yelled at me, clearly in a delusional moment, about something I had apparently promised her or done to her earlier, or on a different day. Using this false information to try to guilt me into giving her a ride to Commercial Drive. I almost did, but I couldn't bring myself to invite her mania into my life, into my heart. I felt like she would never have left my car once she was in there, and would ask for more and more, and I would feel responsible for her. I left and cried a little as I drove exactly where she had wanted to go. I wanted there to be something reasonable I could do for her, someone I could turn to for advice, somewhere I could lead her where she would be touched tenderly, and spoken to softly, and fed and bathed and soothed to sleep. Where is this place? My heart splinters that I cannot fix everything for everyone, and that there is not some way to care for everyone who cannot care for themselves. It just doesn't seem right.

Keep your loved ones close to you, and care for them as you would be cared for. We are all we have in this world, my friends.

x
r.