Nothing like spending 10 days in the peeler bars of the various armpits of the Canadian prairies to give you a fresh perspective on life, love, friendships old and new and the human condition in general.
The plan was to post my 'What Fresh Hell is This?" road trip journal, an idea, that while interesting and funny as hell at times, on further reflection has turned out to be slightly too personal to broadcast.
Instead, the simultaneous truth and invention of written snapshots inspired by the trip, viewpoints of JuneBug and her traveling companions, with a little Ani break here and there…. and, as soon as all the films come in, a pictorial chronicle, featuring the monkey. (Sorry it's so long, but hey, it WAS almost 2 weeks.)
Lyric break…….beginning
Artist : Ani DifrancoSong : Wish I May
i am losing my love for adventure
i'm losing all respect
for me and myself tonight
i wonder what happens if i get to
the end of this tunnel
and there isn't a light
i've worn down the treads
on all of my tires
i've worn through the elbows
and the knees of my clothing
i am stumbling down
the gravel driveway of desire
trying not to wake up
my sleeping self-loathing
do you ever have that dream
where you open your mouth
and you try to scream
but you can't make a sound
that's every day starting now
that's every day starting now
don't tell me it's gonna be alright
you can't sell me on your optimism tonight
it's stiff competition
to see who can stay up later
the stars or the street lights
all they really want
is to be alone with the darkness
no more wish i may
no more wish i might
it takes a stiff upper lip
just to hold up my face
i got to suck it up and savor
the taste of my own behavior
i am spinning with longing
faster than a roulette wheel
this is not who i meant to be
this is not how i meant to feel
i don't think i am strong enough
to do this much longer
god i wish i was stronger
this song could never be long enough
to express every longing
god i wish it was longer
Regina – a woman glimpsed.
As I sat drinking coffee, something nudged against my shoe. It was a blue crayon that had rolled across the floor and sitting opposite me was a dark-haired girl of about four, holding her hand out for it. I picked up the crayon and handed it to her, smiling at her mother in the polite way of strangers.I glanced into her face and saw her exhausted eyes quickly look down, avoiding mine. It was then that I suffered a jolt of appetite for her, that gripping in the stomach that is desire and maybe something else. In a sudden, helpless way, I stared. She had the same coloring as the little girl. I couldn’t have said what her race was, not exactly, but it wasn’t white. Dark hair in a ponytail. Eyes the color of Coca-Cola. Skin that startling velvety brown.
She could be anything, this woman. In cleaner clothes – a housewife. In a mink coat – an heiress. In tight jeans and cheap red pumps – a whore addicted to self-destruction.
But the woman sitting across from me was none of these things. She possessed a different story and I felt that immediate compulsion to study and know the face of a stranger. Was this wrong? Don’t we all memorize the faces of strangers? Her cheeks rose sharply and her lips were full. Slightly too much so – suggesting imprudence and passion. She was beauty, weary beauty.
She lifted her daughter over into her lap and lightly kissed the child’s head. The woman held her daughter with both arms and gently rocked her. She didn’t know I watched, leaning over my book. Her face tipped forward in fatigue and, by habit, I thought, she kissed the small, dark head again.
Lyric break...indecision
Artist : Ani DifrancoSong : Welcome To
welcome to...
no amount of stoned can make you feel okay
and welcome to...
this year's alone brought to you by christmas day
and welcome to...
the darkness into which prayin' people pray
yeah it's quiet here except for this song
now that everybody's gone
hey hey hey hey hey at least you don't have to play along today
you don't have to play along
welcome to...
something like elation when you first open your eyes
just cuz it means that you must have finally got to sleep last night
welcome to...
the precipice between groundlessness and flight
yeah it's quiet here except for this song
now that everybody's gone
hey hey hey hey hey at least you don't have to play along today
you don't have to play along
no you don't have to play along
you don't have to play along
besides which, welcome to...
taking the good stuff down off of the shelf
welcome to...
the art of conversation with yourself
and welcome to...
humming half of a broken tune all day long
and it's quiet here
"I've got it ." She shoots some Sambuca and tips her beer back before leaning across the table towards me, a sly smile on her perfect lips.
"Let me be dressed and make them take their clothes off."
"Yes! One at a time. Lock the door so nobody leaves. 'Hey you, in the Bud ball cap. Yeah, you with the beer gut. Get up on that stage and take it all off so we can get a good look 'atcha'."
We can sit back and scratch our bellies and yell, "She-it. Call yourself a man?"
"Next! Yeah you, sour puss. Smile. That's more like it. Now turn around. Flabby butt and -- make a muscle, would ya? Oh, you are making a muscle?"
"Next! Hey, you're kind of cute. Lie down, spread your legs and raise your butt so we can get a good look."
High fives, laughing hysterically, raising our beers to salute the men who are trying not to stare in the direction of our back booth. If only they knew what we were so happy about.
The Bar – a Confession
Some shows you have to walk outside to get there. We escort each other, but sometimes you have to make a break for it, carrying your shoes in case you have to run, wearing a coat over your costume.Although, to tell the truth, you can slip into bad habits. One day, suddenly, you’re slogging across the parking lot from the hotel to the pub, barefoot. You try to avoid the broken glass using the headlights of the 4X4's pulling in. So many of these places are dead except for showtimes. Then you should see the trucks move in; you’d think they ran on testosterone.
Sometimes, I feel the more naked I am – the safer I am. If I play my cards right, smoke enough dope, stop reading, and try not to think, one of these days I might dissolve into the lights dappling the room, or into the smoke exhaled from the mouths of the men. In the eyes of the workers, the cops, the musclebound bartender, I am immobilized. Like a deer caught in headlights. A secret species. A secret country. It exhilarates me to walk through the crowded bar after my midnight show, the only female in the room, wearing a couple square feet of fabric.
A piece of oil-soaked paper strolling through a forest of matches.
Lyric break….anger
Artist : Ani DifrancoSong : Willing To Fight
The windows of my soul
are made of one way glass
don't bother looking into my eyes
if there's something you want to know,
just ask
I got a dead bolt stroll
where I'm going is clear
I won't wait for you to wonder
I'll just tell you why I'm here
'cause I know the biggest crime
is just to throw up your hands
say
this has nothing to do with me
I just want to live as comfortably as I can
you got to look outside your eyes
you got to think outside your brain
you got to walk outside your life
to where the neighborhood changes
tell me who is your boogieman
that's who I will be
you don't have to like me for who I am
but we'll see what you're made of
by what you make of me
I think that it's absurd
that you think I
am the derelict daughter
I fight fire with words
words are hotter than flames
words are wetter than water
I was a long time coming
I'll be a long time gone
you've got your whole life to do something
and that's not very long
so why don't you give me a call
when you're willing to fight
for what you think is real
for what you think is right
Interlude
...presently, he began to feel very strange indeed.Time seemed to expand. He glanced around the room and his eyes were drawn to an odd glow. The quality of the early-morning light had changed. It angled through the window and fell across the floor with a deep orange luminescence like the light just before a storm.
He slowly exhaled, smoke barely visible before him. He found, somewhat to his surprise, that he still needed to breathe. He inhaled the cool room air, breathing deeply, feeling every subtle muscle and cell involved in the process.
Something very strange was happening. He sat there, bathed in the thunderlight, like a vast and silent detonation of some distant nuclear device. He felt the walls waver in and out, just a little, like they were leaning in for a closer look.
He looked around the room. He saw the familiar walls and furniture but all at once it was a different place. He'd been thrown into another dimension, to a distant corner of the universe, which seemed to have been cunningly fashioned to resemble his room, right down to the smallest detail.
What a bizarre notion. His skin crawled with the strangeness of it and for a moment he felt his sanity wobble - like a circus clown cycling across the abyss-spanning tightrope.
Then he got a grip on himself and a deep resonant calm settled over him. The saffron glow hovered around his body.
Time seemed to have slowed down and the moment froze into a golden snapshot of amber.
Can you blame someone for something he doesn’t let himself know he’s doing and even when you point it out – sees nothing wrong with it?
Flawed
She looked at a picture of them, standing three across, at a party the previous year. She was in the middle, and detached enough to step back and consider that she looked like the brave one of the group, the one quick to laugh, chide, take a stand or take a chance.But things like this – little things like this – revealed the flaws. “Your stupidity could fill volumes”, she thinks. It made her wish she could change everything about herself, totally reinvent her personality, her IQ, her looks, her voice, her name. Her only consolation now was that few were here to see this act of total, unconscionable and absolute stupidity. The inability to be detached enough to let his behavior towards them go.
It had been an ugly fight. One of those arguments that blew truth into little bits, then scattered it all over the place like a round of exploding ammunition. When they were done, there was nothing illuminated or resolved, no clarity, just a lot of shrapnel stuck in your face.
Lyric break….impossible request
Artist : Ani DifrancoSong : Asking Too Much
i want somebody who sees the pointlessness
and still keeps their purpose in mind
i want somebody who has a tortured soul
some of the time
i want somebody who will either put out for me
or put me out of misery
or maybe just put it all to words
and make me say, you know
i never heard it put that way
make me say, what did you just say?
i want somebody who can hold my interest
hold it and never let it fall
someone who can flatten me with a kiss
that hits like a fist
or a sentence, that stops me like a brick wall
because if you hear me talking
listen to what i'm not saying
if you hear me playing guitar
listen to what i'm not playing
and don't ask me to put words
to all the spaces between notes
in fact if you have to ask, forget it
do and you'll regret it
i'm tired of being the interesting one
i'm tired of having fun for two
just lay yourself on the line
and i might lay myself down by you
but don't sit behind your eyes
and wait for me to surprise you
i want somebody who can make me
scream until it's funny
give me a run for my money
i want someone who can
twist me up in knots
tell me, for the woman who has everything
what have you got?
i want someone who's not afraid of me
or anyone else
in other words i want someone
who's not afraid of themself
do you think i'm asking too much?
Hide and Seek
She was left alone on the summer porch, once shaded by huge old elms. She remembered summer-dusk games under the trees, herself leaning against a great trunk, eyes hidden in her hands, slowly counting: twenty-nine...fifty-six...ninety-one...one hundred. Ready or not, here I come!Here I come, seeking something that has no name, something hidden, something wonderful.
Here I come, with no idea where it is but needing so, so much to find it. It was only her friends - hiding out there - so why had she felt that she might find the other thing?
Even now, when dusk comes and she hears the voices of children playing, she remembers that feeling of mysterious anticipation. Marvel - just around the corner. Wonder - hidden in the shadows.
If only she could find it.
She told me once that the reason she believed that we had to reinvent the world for ourselves was that if we didn’t change the world to suit us, then it would change us to suit it, and she couldn’t bear to be who she thought the world would change her into.
A Coffee Shop, nowhere, early morning
Was there anything more beautiful, she wondered as she left the coffee shop, then the sight of yearning on a human face? Not the night sky nor the early morning sunrise could compare with the glory of a woman hoping to meet the man of her dreams before time ran out. She’d seen stories enough for a thousand nights of telling there on that painted face. Roads taken, roads despised. Deeds undone, deeds regretted.And tonight -and every moment between now and tonight – more roads to choose, more deeds to do. She might be turning her head even now, or now, or now, and seeing the face she had longed to love or, just as easily, looking the other way.
Lyric break….ending
Artist : Ani DifrancoSong : Joyful Girl
i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
i do it because it's the least i can do
i do it because i learned it from you
and i do it just because i want to
because i want to
everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says would you prefer the easy way
no, well o.k. then
don't cry
i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head
i know there's no grand plan here
this is just the way it goes
when everything else seems unclear
i guess at least i know
Home
Alone, blessedly quiet and still for the first time in what feels like an age.We are problem-solving creatures, and sometimes when no problems exist, we create some so we have something to solve. Because if we didn’t, we would be forced to confront the echoing stillness beneath all the noise and confusion, which was terrifying because it was unfamiliar.
But it only seems like emptiness at first. Eventually, gradually, you realize it is everything.
Tuning the radio to something wordless and slow, opening the window and wrapping up in a comforter with a mug of gently steaming tea. Still as a mouse, leisurely drifting in and out, savoring the absence of others. Just for an hour, under the surface, dreaming, floating through a delectably lazy time, free of all woes, saturated with a sense of voluptuous irresponsibility. Then slowly, emerging into wakefulness again.
Nothing jars my slow ascent back into the world. When I finally urge myself into a sitting position, gingerly setting my feet on the floor and running my fingers through my matted hair, it feels almost like a crime.
And then I smile, because I’m home again.
November, 2002