oh well, let's see what comes out:

(it's been such a nice wkend, after kick-butt fun show at sue's just one mile from home, i think i'll repost this post from last week, which i'd gotten in a crappy mood & deleted. happy sunday to all!)
just had a cool shower (sometimes the hot water is unwilling) after a nice slow hike up to the water tower (golden evening w/its low shadows was far too lullingly beautiful to stay inside) followed by nice bowl of lukewarm spaghetti consumed while reading a moderately-interesting article from NY times mag, which was in the pile of mags mama gave me yesterday... am seized w/desire to write a bit. the crickets are whirring so fast these eves, in these early autumn eves, they sound like an army of south american whistles or a whispering sea of wind-up instruments... they will be dormant soon as nights get colder... it's a nostalgic sound, a latent memory sound, a lovely churring song...
have had an extremely low-key but pleasant day cleaning house, rescuing a beetle, washing up dishes, playing w/fatso the cat, reading, napping, trying to stretch out & strengthen my rotator cuff, which fear i've injured, continuing to edit a book about mama's championship 1965 european choir, watching all kinda top-10-this & 25-most-that videos on youtube on the tv while james snored gently away... it's been 5 yrs this wkend since he first came over here... what a difference a half-decade's made!
ok, i'm interrupted & he is calling me, but what a rush of thoughts, what a jumble, what a chorus! today's been mostly me & my mind, which sometimes magically magnifies in ways quite enjoyable, stirring, frightening, resolving, rewarding. i got fixated for a while on all the loved ones, then all the  millions, billions of humans that have perished on this earth over time & our lot in life, to perish, & was pondering that one for a while til thought of sister angie's prescient wish from years ago (for now they actually do this!): to have one's corpse buried with a sapling so that we all who choose may become trees, but now all the other mental goofing & meandering's gone except this short story i read today by doris lessing, about snails. i enjoyed it.  you should look it up.
tomorrow is school again, & life has been nice, then a chore, then a trial, then a puzzler, but now it's good again, & that's how it seems to go around here, maybe for all us hairless apes, tho to varying degrees.
may you be happy.

sometimes life

doesn't go the way i want
but still
i can hear the quail blooping & peeping & cawing out the window
and ultimately,
all is well

obsessing on obsessions & the obsessed!

- i was an obsessed child. were you? i was obsessed with drawing pictures, comic books, typing stories & musings on my olivetti, mad magazine, &, once i got past the plateau, playing the piano. then i was an obsessed teen, but such a weirdo: i was obsessed with middle-aged actors, first humphrey bogart, then james garner & hal linden, & at my most obsessed, feverish peak, gene hackman. ha! why was i so strange?! i even had a plastic blue file box filled with folders about all of hackman's movies, movie stills, details of dialogue, casts, reviews lovingly typed & assembled.
- i remember the moment i became obsessed, watching bonnie & clyde, when brawny, burly hackman leaped effortlessly, limberly over the bank teller window. then watching him, all 6-foot-plus & 200 lbs, sprint athletically after a street punk, pulling a punch to threaten with meaty pink fist in the french connection. such bulky uber-male demonstrations drove me nuts!
- i know now it was just the flip side of the more usual teenaged-girl safe attraction to the androgynous little slips of boy whose polished smiles still beautify the covers of teen mags. although it's a step toward real relationships, attraction to perfect-pretty boy idols & hulky man-hunks are so far-removed from the real boys at school!
- we were raised in the church til aged 10, then given a choice if we wanted to keep going. my sister & i screamed NO!!! (at least that's what i remember...) my theory is, the less god or sense of the spiritual i have had in my life, the more obsessed i would get.  oh my lord, the obsessions have been many in the many years, even after i got sober & had periods of hugely unspiritual living! now being up here in the beautiful mountains, in a, yes, often-trying but loving, rewarding, emotionally edifying marriage, with fulfilling & immersing work, my obsessions are at bay... tho they still crop up!
- for instance, james & i've gotten obsessed in the past six months with columbo, tho me more than him, of course, cause, well, i think i'm just more neurotic. next weekend we're gonna stay at an old motel toward the mojave desert for one night, & i found out it has served often as a movie-tv locale, & then i kept looking (obsessing) & found out -- sh*t! -- they used it in an episode of columbo!! -- tho unfortunately not in one of the patrick mcgoohan episodes, cause that would've been a trifecta of obsession, to be w/james at a motel where a columbo was filmed starring my current-favorite deceased actor!!!  (mcgoohan, coolly, stoically handsome, did not drink or kiss onscreen because he was married & felt otherwise would disrespect his wife. he turned down the role of 007!)*
- there was a picture of the episode, so i clicked the link & found a site & realized: i am garden-variety obsessed. the person who made this website is full-boat, jenny-at-aged-16, maybe-whackadoodle obsessed! click here and see what i mean. http://columboscreenshots.blogspot.com
- columbo is such a terrific show! peter falk was a genius! so at least the man who assembled the site  has directed his obsession toward something worthy. just imagine if he put his effort & mind toward solving a world problem: he could change the planet, maybe!
(ps, here's a picture of patrick mcgoohan, just so you can see what i was enthusing about above...) :D
(tho of course james is far more handsome!!!)

* (from http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2015/04/20/batman-as-007-twelve-actors-who-turned-down-the-role-of-james-bond/:) A little more about Patrick McGoohan who had he accepted the role may have been the best actor to ever play the part. But it was not only the womanizing McGoohan objected to; he truly despised the character, calling Bond “contemptible and simplistic.”... McGoohan, a man of very strong ethics said in a 1960’s interview about the Dr. No script which he turned down, “I thought there was too much emphasis on sex and violence. It has an insidious and powerful influence on children. Would you like your son to grow up like James Bond? Since I hold these views strongly as an individual and parent I didn’t see how I could contribute to the very things to which I objected.”

pages about the pages...

- last week, i stopped by the 50th anniversary soiree for our wee local weekly, the mountain enterprise, to congratulate the publisher & editor for their good work: they put out an award-winning little paper that i enjoy reading each week! patric heglund, editor, asked me to write a  bit about my school involvement. it came out yesterday, and wow! she fixed it so i sounded much more wholesome & circumspect than in the original i'd sent her, where i groused about my former school district. i think this is the first time i've worked w/the press & been much happier after they revised a piece i'd written! the article in her hands turned into a civic piece, a proud little showcase for my school's elective & after school program, the arts, the frazier park library, my boss, & my former boss, kindly & talented marie smith, who unnecessarily has been going thru it at her job bc of a certain person of whom i'll not say much except that he needs to go.
- the pic of james is funny: don't know if you can tell thru the blur, but it reads, "welcome your new neighbor," which, coupled w/these humorously aggressive & eccentric images of him, made me laugh! this was the sue's tavern show he & the whole band missed due to accident on I-5 blocking traffic, the one that was to have been my last w/the blues express.
... but he just asked if i would do the shows up here on the mtn & in bakersfield, so of course i said yes. :) whee! school takes top priority, but music? heck, yeah! tomorrow he plays a fundraiser in so-cal, but i won't be there. should be a kick in the pants. you can look it up at www.mswalkride.org

dang! blablabla, & many exclamation points!!!!

- for my first xmas list item, i request the book "moanin' at midnight," about the howlin' wolf, by james segrest & mark hoffman. STILL reading it!!! every a.m. before school, i drink 18 cups of coffee & eat pb toast & read about 5 pages, if i'm lucky & have the time before heading to work. i love this book more than any i've recently read, not just cause the wolf was an inimitable awesome bada*s & an enormously manly hunk. a few yrs back, the wonderful san diego-based musician billy watson spotted james & enthused, "it's the modern-day howlin' wolf!" and we both were so, so flattered since billy's not just a sprightly, talented musical dynamo,  but a good-natured man of great sincerity, so he wasn't just blowing smoke up our cans.

- reading this book, i realize, yes! more & more, on each page, it DOES sound like james, from  personality, stage style, & treatment of other musicians to the arc of his life, specifically how domesticity calmed & settled him, gave him peace. wild! i give james reports as i read, telling him he needs to read it when i finish, but i've had it a long, long time from the library here, so mebbe i just need my own copy. yes, that'll be it. this book's a definite keeper-for-life!

- the clincher is, in the back, segrest & hoffman have a discography that -- thank you, jeebus! -- lists all the sessions & all the personnel. yay! so when i hear piano i like, i can go look see who it is. hurrah!

- i write "dang" cause the book online's too expensive for me to want to spring for right now. when i get my 1st check, other things'll be priority: getting the 2-story-high east windows washed; getting our chariots fully serviced & maybe new paint for the green hornet; getting the septic tank dumped. yes, there's no real plumbing up here, nor cable, but what a place to live! the smoke's clearing from  the so-cal fires (i say optimistically) & the weather's cooling w/autumn's arrival... so nice! so breezy! so lovely!

- oh, school is kicking my butt, but what a terrific assignment i have! am very much overdoing it having added fine arts & library to my teaching plate, but i can do it! i know i can! just got a piano in my classroom so now have access to three (classroom, art rm, music rm)! three pianos! three old friends! my students are so cute, being 6th graders w/yet no touches of adolescent rebellion. "we have to be nice to this piano," i told them. "we have to take care of it. it's like having a beloved pet, an old elephant or an old dog in the room." & they all nodded in agreement, buying in to the niceness & special situation: having their own old piano. :) 

- james has come through just like he said he would, taking care of the house by day while i work. thank you so much!!! he tells me, "i'm so lucky, i married the hottest woman in the world!" and i say, "oh, me with my gray hair? no way!" and he replies, "no, baby, i had no idea! you're not just [physical compliments] & talented & smart & sweet, you're a powerhouse! i've never gotten to see you fully in action til now [that i'm teaching]!"

- how many people would even notice something like this? i was touched & happy. we've both taken action to get our neurochemicals properly balanced, & he says, "i had no idea; you've been dragging me along! we're both doing great right now, & i want to show you what i can do!" i think his show today, my 1st out of the band (waaaah!), is gonna be a killer. he posted this flyer i made some months back to advertise today's event, & people are spreading it like the cliched wildfire. no other so-cal musician is as iconic as james!

- yes, the buzz is high for this show: i'm sad i won't be there & i will really miss playing w/anthony & steve, but i'm so happy james likely will play to a packed house! tonight he's gonna jump on with pink's "monster show" at harvelle's, too: he likes pink bc the man is a strong frontman, like james, but also eccentric, theatrical, w/odd sense of humor, like james. 

here's the flyer and details for today/tonight's two shows: Come see Whiteboy James 2pm - 6pm  Sat. Sept. 3rd at - All Sports, 7132 Garden Grove Blvd, Westminster, CA 92683; and 2 for 1 Tickets!!! Wild Fun Labor Day Weekend Party! Saturday night blowout at Harvelles lbc Live Rockin Blues & Burlesque with Dennis Jones, Billy Watson, Chris Smith, Kip Dabbs, WhiteBoy James, Mike Arguello **LABOR DAY WEEKEND PROMO CODE: LABORDAY16 to get 2 for 1 tickets for Saturdays Show! tixz www.harvelles.com

- ok, now back to reading for me, then it's time to practice flute, then head to the smoggiest, hottest town around to visit my beautiful family!! may you have a good book & good movement. take that how you will. :)
(oh, crap, i forgot why originally i blogged! having to learn new instruments is daunting, but i found a whole youtube series, masterfully assembled by the us army field band. whether you're a music teacher or musician trying to improve chops & technique, these videos should be vital! what a treasure trove!  enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/user/USArmyFieldBand )