Another Sunday down, another sun down on a Sunday, light draining from the world slowly. We are headed North, homeward bound and tired.
Our friend Sean Morse was in town from… from somewhere. It’s apparently a pretty up-in-the-air question as he’s using a half-year tour to space his previous Living-in-Colorado existence apart from his future Living-in-Seattle existence. A dramatic change, but not as crazy as some. He has family and friends there, and he’s using this time and these miles to visit friends on the East Coast and the West Coast of Europe, throughout the Old World and New… he’s racking up a LOT of miles and hitting a lot of places that I miss hitting. He’ll be at Eddie’s Attic tomorrow and he’ll be in San Diego in a couple of weeks and though I think of myself as a child of winter, THIS winter has taken it out of me. I could really use some South California weather. Some invariable 70s would not go amiss on my skin.
Petal Blight performing at Java Mammas in Reisterstown, MD. Elliot and Paige of Petal Blight performing fretless warbly noises, both high and low in nature.
Sean is amazing. He was good before. I admired his playing, I liked his voice, I was stunned by the sheer speed of his off-the-cuff writing. And he’s only upped his game. He’s written perhaps my favourite on-the-road song, a cliché that isn’t any less powerful for its frequency in singer/songwriter circles. We all feel it, that lonesomeness and that isolation. We all Love it, the wanderlust and wonderlust-attraction to All Things Other. But damn if maybe none of us have expressed it quite as well. The line about “Christine gets me while I’m here” just breaks me.
Late-night diner dinner, coffee, pho and back to our hard-worked steeds. He’s heading south and we’re staying put for another month. Then we head West around the same time he heads North – as he’ll be out of West to go. I envy his future proximity to Roswell and the Scifi Museum. Because I’m not geeky. Not at all.
I’m also sick. This has made his visit somewhat bittersweet. I’m aware of not being 100%. Of having that medicine distraction, that slight fug and fog of cough medicine insinuating itself throughout my blood. I hate feeling Not All Here. People often suspect I’m not all there. That’s different. This is that chemical fuzziness that I so despise, amplified by fatigue and a body-wracking cough that leaves me breathless and dizzy. I think there’s something fuzzy and prickly Living in my throat. Do you think that throats would be where Fizgigs laid their Fizgig eggs if Fizgigs laid Fizgig eggs?
And no, I’m not sure if that sentence was more a result of my not being all here, or not being all there. Surely the two compound upon one another sometimes? It’s supposed to go down to five tonight. An unholy cold temperature that will assure me that no matter how beautiful the world looks, I’ll not be walking it tonight.
