Epic dream of Europe.

In southern Italy, I've brought my mother. Dave is with me. We're in a seaside ancient town - I've been here before. All of the islands are familiar. We flee the tourists in the center of town and creep into a dark cafe in a salty smelling side street. Grand tall windows that don't let in any light. We talk about tomorrow.
A girl comes in and I'm trying to speak Italian to her, and she's trying to speak English to me. It all works out. She invites us to her flat for the night. We fall into the den of Italian revellers easily and a performance is requested.

The girl wants me to accompany her on a song/performance piece. She'll be singing and playing the koto, and I'll be playing... this.
She hands me an instrument that is really a sea urchin, day-glo orange - and a plectrum.
To be fair, it's a deconstructed sea urchin, so between the caviar-looking clumps there are stringy bits and we all know that stringy bits vibrate in magic dreams. So I strum the strings for a twinky little sound - picking out one or two notes is nearly impossible because the strings are crisscrossed and close together. It sounds better if I run across the whole thing, like an autoharp.
we are to stand still while we play, an dlook straight ahead. we're wearing these white kimonos.
It goes over well.

Dave and I leave the next morning at first by speed boat. Dazzling sapphire waters and crazy towns built up on coastal hillsides.
We have to meet my mom somwhere near Venice. But we have a car and she's taking a train. There's also no predicting what will happen to her on the way there, so we decide to take our time and stop somewhere in between. Where do you want to go?, I ask him, feeling rich with adventure. Rome? Venice? Firenze?
He doesn't know, so I just start driving.

Next episode on the same trip, Dave has taken a side trip now and Jor is with me. We're in Germany, I'm still driving. Enter femme fatale car chase scene.
At the villain's order, I sit on the roof of the car, facing in. I'm carrying a set of 5 very long knives. like bread knives with all different serrations. She chooses two and the car sidles up to a bike rider. The villianess grabs the rider's leg and stretches it so that his foot is achored to the car. The man kind of floates alongside the car with the bicycle. The villianess then starts to saw the man's ankle, then longways into his shin. She's trying to break the bones apart, but the knives just aren't sharp enough. She seems frustrated to have purchased such flimsy knives. When at last she's severed the leg completely, the man goes flying off. She picks up "her" bit of the leg, shrugs, and tosses it to the side.
As if we were in a taxicab, we politely ask to be let off at the next corner. There's the German version of that long windowed dark cafe. We drop in, There are lots of customers, and just one table for us. I grab the salt and go back outside to cover up the blood on the street. Hopefully the police wont know we're involved. Oh. There are teh police. I sit on the cafe's stoop with the salt shaker wrapped up in a pair of socks. Too afraid to move. The cops question another man, look at me kind of funny, then walk away.
Back in the cafe, all is erased. all is sunny. Jor, you're here! You're finally in Europe! I look around and realize that this bar is one of the places that Dave and I played in while on tour. I feel at home. There are so many wonderful things to show him. We order some wine...

Cosmic Grocer Revue

Dave and I vacation in Italy and quickly decide to stay. He takes a job with a produce delivery service whose reputation is akin to that of Mambo Movers in Philly. Which is to say that it's a decidedly masculine profession, but here in a classically Italian way - muscle-bound heroes parade their truck down the market and outside restaurants, chucking the required vegetables directly at their customers. Shopkeepers argue with their daughters about who will go out and catch the vegetables for the day.
It's no surprise to me that Dave has fallen into this comely clique, and with his vintage paperboy wardrobe firmly established he really looks like he should be delivering something.

Today it's raining and I take a little walk in the market to see if i can catch the truck and say hello to my sweetie. Sure enough, they've just all jumped off the truck and there he is in a courtyard, seeming to be looking for something (me, of course). The fine mist shakes its dewy fur all over us as we embrace and scuttle down an alley and into a cafe for lunch.

The menu is complex and varies from 9$ to 51$ lunches - dream foods of course.
We sit in a booth to pour over the menu and delight in our new city. How did we get here anyway? Hey ,do you want to start with mussels?

A series of characters invite themselves to our table - waitresses, madmen. One man shows us his hand-drawn comic book on the subject of the mighty produce vendors, portraying them as leopard skin bikini-clad vintage bodybuilders, arms full of verdure against the backdrop of the solar system. "Cosmic man!" he keeps calling Dave. We all laugh about it and I am so proud that my hot hunky husband is a cosmically hot grocer.

We never get to eating - I'm training to work at the cafe now. A blonde tiger of a young woman is explaining to me the interpersonal dynamics of the cafe. Who's zooming whom, who not to flirt with, whose affairs are openly discussed and whose are still secret (but not from the waitstaff). The guy with the comic book is also a waiter, and as I start realizing that I live in a place where a crazy disshevelled artist can double as a waiter at a mega-fancy cafe, it dawns on me once again that I'm in the right place.

My Own Personal Opera & Biking to Italy

I have been cast to play myself in a brand new opera whose plot eerily resembles the last chapter of strife in my love life. It is written in the highly dramatic style of the great Romantic operas, and the love triangle is murderously melodramatic.
Before running off to my true love, I must escape the evil clutches of the former lover. Here ensues a full operatic diatribe between us, replete with glissando runs and castigating gestures. Singing out my grievances directly to him feels appropriate, as does the thunder of his response - calling all low strings to make us shudder! I'm enthralled by the darkness of the scene and the surprising richness of his voice - think "the castle" of Bram Stoker's Dracula- and laugh at the opera out loud as my ludicrous imagination becomes transparent as a dream. Certainly in real life I romanticized the ex as dark and mysterious, but in truth his voice was quite ugly in argument and I'll be damned if there was any castle.
The scene ends with nothing more than a shouting match and my character is swept into the arms of her beloved. Enter pinnacle of triangle. (It's worthy to note that no one else saved me.
I ran away from the evil one on my own.) Disappointing dream land did not clearly cast my husband in this role - instead it gives me a blurry face, an unimportant personage. Even so, I feel that he does represent him as he gives his solo and calm washes over the dream. Clouds part. The end.

-

I live in New York City. My best friend has become obsessed with a rich stylist from Central America who has invented a new liquor. We are working on branding and selling the new intoxicant - refrigerators full of the stuff - when the boss reveals that he's got AIDS and is going back to Venezuela to kick the bucket in the company of his family. My friend is distraught. I look out into the courtyard of our apartment building, at the grid of bricked up chimneys and stairwell windows, and see a prison forming. I realize I would be wasting my time to stay any longer.
I set out on my bicycle heading east. There's a tunnel that reaches all the way across the Atlantic. Cars and buses making their way through, dangerously. I decide to bike to Europe, then, since I have nothing else to do and I'm eager for adventure. I have no supplies, not even water. No passport, no nothing. But I enter the tunnel anyway. The road splits every hundred miles, taking one lane up to a rest area at surface level. There they are, the golden Mickey D arches, floating over the pure ocean. Ugh, I think, thank god I'm leaving America! I set back down to the tunnel and hundreds of miles feel like city blocks. Before I know it I've arrived at the office of my old professor in Florence - red eyed, exhausted and in need of a place to crash. They seem confused about my proclamation of having biked to them, suspicious almost. I'm so high on endorphins it doesn't matter what they think. I look out the window here and see a tree against the backdrop of a beautiful arched old doorway and know I've come to the right spot.
Brava, says the professor, but you should have been wearing a helmet. We'll see to it that you get a proper motorbike while you're here - and an iphone (seriously, brain).

Goddess of the Sea

A comedy about war-torn Nazi Germany.
I'm helping an artistic wealthy Jewish family hide their treasured collection of ... giant toothbrushes as Nazis plan to invade and pillage their rural mansion. As we wind our way through the palatial abode, room after opulent room unfolds. The wife of the family is hidden from view until the very last room . She is finally found sitting in a chair reading poetry next to the most gorgeous Bosendorfer that has ever been crafted. This thing practically has elephantine halos hanging from it. It takes up almost the whole parlor. She complains she hasn't been playing or writing lately, black clouds covering her inspiration. Her husband assures me that she's a wonderful pianist, but seems a bit uninterested in motivating her at the moment, what with the purge going on.
We bury a giant toothbrush in the woods, only to look back on the house to see that the Naziees have arrived. What's more, the lady of the house has haphazardly buried her own prized giant toothbrush, whose head is sticking up out of the otherwise pristine garden mulch.
We reenter the house in hopes of saving her, or the toothbrushes?
I'm sitting at the kitchen counter with one of the daughters as the Nazi soldiers arrive, looking at a yellowing biography of Sergei Rachmaninoff, his dreamy visage winking at us out of the black & white photograph. The Nazis overhear me babbling to the child about the genius of Rach and the beauty of music, and decide that we can live. We hold our breath until they miraculously leave the premises. Then we flee, leaving the wife behind to mope.

We fight our way through the darkening forest and eventually make it to the sea. Swimming without any lifejackets or flotation device at all, swimming for our lives, I know it cannot last. We've all managed to keep our heads above water, but it's dark and the sea is getting choppy. Just as I'm about to give up hope, a woman's head, about the size of a stretch Humveee, pops up out of the water. Waves splash open to reveal down to her shoulders. Is she a colossal statue?
She stops the frantic storm for a moment to reveal herself, standing ten stories tall. Without a word, but a smile, she fetches for us a boat from the bottom of the ocean.

We sail with grateful hearts through a treacherous night of storming, to awake floating down a mountainous stream. It leads right onto a road of some sort. I leave the others behind to investigate. The mountain sits next to a bustling town. I'm spat out into the courtyard of a Greek apartment building; old women sewing in their laps and throwing scraps to their dogs. Next down the road is a market with fruits and everyone speaking Spanish. Trying to locate myself in the world, I figure we could have made it to Spain, but it's highly unlikely. Suddenly, with a shock of disappointment, I read on a little placard: Welcome to Reading, PA.

Funeral, Family, and 2 essential Yogasanas

Without announcing the act of death, my mother informs me that today is my grand mother's funeral. All immediate family members are rounded up for a time in our old town in Ohio and I am to drive the coffin around in the back of my car, which, quite frankly, creeps me out.
It dawns on me that none of this is appropriate and that I must return to the house to get directions and dutifully herd the family where we need to be. My mother's directions are to a chapel outside of Philly, and the route is designated in a mixture of alien symbols of various colors (like an ailing ink cartridge) and poetic meanderings such as "the toll man takes his little toll", wobbly smiley faces and the like. I contend that these directions will simply not do. I get on the computer to find the address, and am pleased to find that the chapel is a lovely place with golden statues of the Virgin Mary and a red velvet backdrop. (David Lynch meets Holy Roman, with a dash of old Italian mini-cathedral)

Before leaving, Dave and I take side by side bubble baths in the living room with my family but a shower liner away. It's kind of disturbing to have them so close, but we really needed to relax.
I'm not ready to accept my grandmother's death. In fact, I'm not even sure that it's happened since no one is talking about it. To make sure, I go to her house - the old one in Lynchburg. She is sitting at her dining room table with the leaves dropped down, an exquisite set of lady's vanity utensils laid before. She appears to be writing checks.

I immediately see that she has passed, and this is her spirit, and that now is the time to tell her what I often tell her, the most important thing to say to someone that you love with your whole being. I am filled to the brim with a feeling suddenly - a radiant love, a spiritual force that envelops us. At this moment, there is nothing but love pouring forth from me and being returned by her. Her gooey brown eyes are bigger than normal, they reassure me that my speechlessness is forgiven. I say it anyway, crying joyfully.... "I love you so much, so much." She half chides me for being so sentimental and talks to me for a while. I don't remember what she said, too busy taking in the grace of her earthly personality, which I will miss so dearly. I try to respond at some point and she disappears.

---------------------------------------

At the chapel, the coffin is laid out. She appears to be sitting straight up. No, it's someone else.
How could they have gotten the time wrong? How terrible! At least the chapel is everything the website promised. Bodies are shuffled, coffins are wheeled about. During the changeover, I get lost in the annals of the backrooms and basement, the green carpeted stairs that lead down to the beauty salons of the dead. I see inept funeral interns tossing around body boards and playing bumper cars with caskets.

Finally, it's her turn. I'm sitting with the family. Justin has spontaneously taken a yoga pose on the floor to celebrate teh funeral in his own way. He has extended his arms into child's pose, and separated his arms into segments at the forearm, wrist and finger bones, cut vertically into cross sections.

Various things start to annoy me. There's so much noise, and people are just scattered everywhere throughout the chapel like a cafe! I am so upset, I take a particularly noisy little girl out of the room to shake her, turn her upside down and give her a talking to. Actually, no, I think I'm just entertaining her - her body is long and narrow like a doll's. I return her and she's quieter after that, but many people are still being rude and I go through the crowd giving dirty stares.

On the way back to my seat, I see Dave's set up a virtual airstrip of power adapters for playing music. I totally forgot we were supposed to play! It's the last thing I feel like doing really, so I bail, which disappoints him a little. He wanders off, and a strange thing happens.
The woman in the casket from before reappears, balancing on long lengs that don't bend. She's going through the chapel, bumping every person on the head with a wooden cross to bless them. This is an excellent technique for crowd control, I think. She scratches the top of my head affectionately with her postmortem french manicured claws.

My grandmother appears to be peaceful in her casket. The preacher begins to deliver his sermon, pauses a bit for the body to noisily relieve itself of its last gasses and air, continues extolling the virtues of this magnificent lady. She shifts around a bit in the coffin, makes a few faces, then settles into savasana, a soft smile on her face. How nice, we all agree.

Time: Before the Current Era, Pre-Biblical in fact, Pre-Historical.....

The Earth has fallen off its orbit, making a wide elliptical shape that takes it further from the sun than it ever should be in certain seasons. The Earth has given up half of itself to sharp tall mountains of icy blue and black for this season, and everything living there is dim and struggling to survive.

I live in a town on the outskirts of the dim land, with many other people who go about in loincloths. There is a giant in our town whose name is Alex. He's a bit off but not exactly slow, maybe he's just "different" and we all treat him as such in our minds. Everyone's obsessed with getting fire for their homes...

We must take a trip to meet up with the head of the human community. This trip is very far away, so we take a prehistoric vehicle, not altogether so different from my honda. Arriving at the human capital, I first notice that a percentage of the people are wearing big black capes that hide their entire body and even the face. When we stop the "car" (it's made of stone), some agents pull Alex from the car and immediately throw one of these black robes onto him, saying, "He has the disease! He has it!"
This was how they marked the people who were going to die from the great human plague. We were not supposed to touch them. Anyone who was seen touching them also got a black robe. I thought of the many times I'd shaken his hand or embraced him ina friendly way, and then worried for my community back home. Would we all perish in this dark world before the sun came back to us??

Miss Haversham aesthetic

For/with ROSE:

A thoroughly Miss Haversham aesthetic.
we were in tattered white gowns very late 18th century. we were 16 years old with powdered messy blonde dreadlocks, half twisted around wired ribbon.
our hairs were very loooooooooong.

we were in the charge of a Roulhac-like figure who was dressed and coiffed to match us, but she was a littl emore put together. she wanted to take us to the country.
she tried to fix my hair, but it kept un rolling itself in spittle lace tangles.

we escaped.
climbing down river banks full of snow, a very un-virginian kind of Brown Dirt mixing in some color. we were lost in the woods and far away from Miss Roulhac Haversham..... we were throwing snow all over our fur hats and shawls and crazed petticoats.

Then we came upon a leanto that just barely housed yet another woman in tattered white.
She was like a shaman, she was a frozen princess meditating on the disintegration of grograin and chiffon.

Seed pearls freckled the mountain of her, crystal diadems crowned each silver eyelash. Were it not for the shadow of the lean-to, she would have blended into the wintry white, a mere sparkle in the atmosphere.

We sat in front of her as worshippers do those giant golden Buddhas in thailand.
she spoke about something - Femininity, the winter, the crystal moment of contentment buried in months of solitude. virginal, white hot, well lived.