a cargo ship, a suez canal and an excavator walk into a bar…

hallo dears

love from an air bnb in auckland in between the splore festival – which was incredible – and a jaunt over to our old neighborhood in hawkes bay.

i was going to post something big and beefy today but i am so zonked from the festival travel and travails and the glorious issue of trying to sleep in a tent with blaring techno going til 4 am that i am taking the day off mostly in bed because i feel massively worn down and the next days are solo with ash – i’ve taken him out of school for a week – in a car staying at various friends houses in hawkes bay. can. not. get. sick.

also i thought my twitter post today might amuse you:

i love you all. i mean, wanna come? it would only cost about $100,000,000,000. per city.

oh and this.

an old college friend – rob matthews – just dug this up and sent it to kya, who texted it to me.

it’s me dancing with my friend matt shawkey at our society house, eclectic, at wesleyan university. i’m about 19. it’s taken in the eclectic ballroom but i have no memory of this night, what we were doing, why we were dancing, or…anything.

chances are i was really inebriated. i spent 1995-1999 mostly inebriated. someday i’ll actually go write all those dark memories down. they’re in there, somewhere. i’m planning to write a lot this year. maybe a new book, maybe just essays funded by the patreon, maybe both. i love writing for my patreon/blog and getting paid. nothing has to go off and convince a publisher it’s worth something. i just write and get paid. i started the patreon much more focused on music but now, i need to write, and i need to make a living, and making money from writing can be hard. i’ve convinced you people to pay me to write.

so…i am a goddamn lucky writer.

there’s too much to process right now and writing – words on a page, not just songs on a piano – seems to be my preferred path out of hell. everything that happened a long time ago is starting to make a lot more sense. the visits back there will be painful.

i don’t know where or how to start excavating certain areas of pain and trauma.

slowly.

i’ll go slowly.

……

my mother sent this picture/meme to a family text thread today.

i imagine all the excavators, the tugboats, the human beings trying to get this fucker out of the canal.

the canal is my next book. the ship is my ego. the excavator is my next therapy session.

the canal is climate change. the ship is the military industrial complex. the excavator is great thunburg.

the metaphor is ripe for the taking, all.

the canal is …. your life?

the ship is …. your past?

the excavator is …. ?

keep going.

the rotting cargo containers are every friend you’ve ever had, or every argument you’ve ever lost. i mean go CRAZY.

the winner gets a donut

x

a