Beachwood, Ohio
1. In Ohio for the Cain Park Arts Festival this weekend. I’ve done this show five or six times - it’s a two-and-a-half day event - a fun and quality show. The public is nice, the town is nice, and the show treats us like royalty. I’m excited about being here.
2. I don’t understand car radiators. Sometimes I seem to lose coolant like I was pouring it out the window, other times it doesn’t seem to leak at all. Anyway, the Beige Bullet had a lovely and trouble-free trip. On a relatively cool summer day. Which makes my lack of air conditioning more tolerable.
3. Today’s favorite road-trip iPod song:
Well I could have been a famous singer
If I had someone else’s voice
But failure’s always sounded better
Lets fuck it up boys, make some noise…
-Bright Eyes, “Rode To Joy”
4. After not driving today’s route for a couple of years, it’s oddly reassuring to find that, in spite of constant construction over at least the last 26 years that I’ve been driving it, the Pennsylvania Turnpike continues to make that state the laughingstock of the nation. They spend years (and millions) digging and detouring and blasting and paving whichever small section, managing to upgrade it from death-trap to merely inadequate.
5. Pennsylvania Turnpike. Today.
I’m not going to tell you what. Or why. Or how. Not for a long time.
But I am onto something.
—–
A photograph.
I live in a dark room. I’ve lived there as long as I can remember. I used to be scared of that darkness, dreading the time I had to spend there. I spent years looking for the light switch, trying to turn on a light to brighten the darkness.
Lately I’ve been liking my dark room. I go there and hide. Hide in my beautiful sadness. It’s nice.
1. Happy Fourth of July. I’d be more happy about it myself if my president and his entourage weren’t buzzing my house in their big black helicopters even as I type this. Get outta my town.
2. Ran the 4th of July 5k this morning - my knee is still a little bothersome, but at least I can run and race and not do too badly.
3. My softball season finished last night with a rare and unexpected win. The team has one more game next week but I’ll be in Cleveland, and I’m not playing in the fall league, so I’m done for the year.
4. From the never-ending “right-wing nut-job news” department, via George Loper, “christian” news reports about sprinter Tyson Homosexual.
5. I might have already posted this - I feel like I’ve seen it before anyway? - but even so, it bears another look: From stuffonmycat.com, Cats that look like Wilford Brimley.
6. Your obligatory independence day Jesse-the-dog photo. Strike a pose.
And then, after I’ve fallen, I notice the warm, red blood on my knees. I don’t seem to be bleeding badly; I’m not in pain. I almost laugh. I roll onto my side, then my back, and all I know is the hunger of last night in my belly, and the warmth of today on my face.
