sunday morning (not) coming down & a country founded in genocide & slavery

yesterday i chauffeured james to his show. decided i won´t play with this band for a while. but now kidá´s back from hawaii & james likely will be able to expand his repertoire again, which means a lot more variety, happier band, happier james. the timing of my resignation was off! argh! but james told me i have an open invite to re-join. :) i am a lucky person. we are supposed to practice the stompers wed & i hope we just slam thru the first blaster slash lp because it´s in our cells. i asked if we could learn a lot more bob wills, chuck berry, & blasters. and i´d like to do some weird old rockabilly tunes of my liking. he told me that bob wills started playing in bands when he was a child & by the time he was 16 or 17, was fronting his. he only knew break downs, rags, waltzes, two-steps, & square dances, so he would improv his songs around those. and such a beautiful, stomping, happy, brilliant legacy blossomed from that! the old recordings of him & the texas playboys have been our #1 listen in the past year, along with for me zydeco. wills was a virtuouso fiddle player, delightful singer, nimble, funny lyricist, & fantastic band leader. every single player was top-notch, & the instruments dance & weave & harmonize & speed along with such joy. it would be heaven on earth to be able to have even part of that experience, tho for me, it would have to be without the go juice & bennies & bop pills. james had a terrifically successful show last night, & his friend eric sardinas (sardinias?) showed up. james told me many times on the way home that eric is ¨really famous¨ in spain. he was high on happiness talking about his friend, a guy handsome up close & gentlemanly, the latter which i really appreciated! such a guy could be a snake! he must be a songwriter, i think, since he told me, ¨your eyes are mesmerizing¨ as well as that james is ¨an outside cat, but one that will always come home.¨ :) while james played his butt off, i went across the street to the lakewood center & thought, this is so novel for me from lily-white kern county, all the black teenagers having fun, no gang-banger-looking kids, just teenagers enjoying the mall, but there were a lot of them! and constant from outside, audible behind the soothing shopping musical soundtrack, was the sound of police helicopters & sirens. it was unsettling, all that sound of cop activity, but i didn´t think much of it, just it´s part of being in the sh*tty city, mebbe. so i kept walking, looking at the kids & all the clothing & shoe stores, then came across - gasp! - a book store! yes, there´s an amazing book off in that mall! emerged hours later with a bursting bag for me & james, family, & a bunch of k-pop music for maddy, who is a really expert on it. k-pop music is boxed in swanky style. i guess new the music sets are quite expensive, so they seem to partially justify it with fancy packaging. i walked out with treasure-loaded arms to a sea of sirens, squad cars & cops. truly, these guys looked like sterotypes of big, fat, pink-faced, ultra white cops. cruisers were circling the mall & surrounding shops at snailś pace, lights flashing, announcing, vacate the premises now; leave this place now; get off the sidewalks & leave. inside was lively, happy mall; outside was armageddon. i have never seen such heavy police presence. it looked like footage of mass shootings. what was going on?!? oh god, i thought, this is bad, whatever happened! more & more law enforcement was arriving, more & more sirens. i beat it back to the club & waited for james, looking on my phone for info. all i could find was the kids were doing a flashmob. a flashmob?!?! wtf were all the cops doing there???? a father posted, ¨get your babies home. they just children they don´t know these cops got heat.¨ mike harden finally showed me what he´d located: the mall had been closed due to ¨civil unrest.¨ the source: law enforcement. a member of james´s band told me he was glad the cops were doing what they were because ¨things can escalate quickly.¨ i know james has said the same when he was in the military & had to deal with large crowds that turned into riots. but on the way home, he also told me the town we were in is notoriously racist & the sheriffs dept is a bunch of a*sholes. they are the ones that always cause him problems & try to majorly assault him (instead of minor, which they always do) when he tries to get home or to a gig, even still, over 20 yrs after... ok, back to the subject. he said the white town doesn´t like all the young blacks coming to their mall for the weekend. so the SD sends its battalion to harass the kids until they leave. horrible! how could this be true?!? isn´t this a major civil rights lawsuit? how could this happen in america?!? well, then i found out the kids were setting off firecrackers & jumping on cars. so it was a little more than nothing they were doing. but still... this did NOT justify all that pork. america. these could be its last decades, don´t you think? we shall fall, as did rome. as a teacher, iḿ saddened by the idea bc i was raised in a family that identified our country with democracy, ingenuity, hard work, compassion, & a desire for fairness. but the reality has been a steady worsening of this land due to greed, inequality, & people kept deliberately ignorant, distracted, & sick by endemic screen culture (producing solipsism & narcissism), poisoning fake food, & corporate consumerism. plus it´s a country founded in genocide & slavery. i have to admit: how can such an evil entity truly last? & why should it? it really makes me sad. this country is beautiful, & so are many of its ideals. but look what has happened. just look. ... ... ... well, i don´t know why the coconut went there, but think i´ll leave this screed in place. ... ... ... just 20 mins ago, we were playing music, & he still is. i could learn from james: DON´T LET THE COCONUT RUIN A GOOD TIME! so i´ll just post some pix: one, a little painting i found yesterday for $3 when wonderful mom & dad came to see the new little house; the next two from last night as we had late-night chicken & beans; and the final one from this morn, with dear james loudly singing ¨one woman man.¨ (i was so tired, i fell into bed & didn´t take off my makeup, but don´t think anyone here will tell my mama.) i sure love my husband. he is a dear soul, when it gets down to it, tho like i wrote in a song, ¨he´s so sweet, meanest muther humper that i ever seen.¨ he´s both as well as much, much more. he says part of why he must´ve met me was so he could meet dad, & that dad is one of his best friends, & he loves mom & dad so much, & that´s the kind of thing james says, but nobody else ever has, & dad told him, when me & james were having tough times, ¨i´ve never seen my daughter so happy.¨ so in short, as usual, been down so long, but looks like there´s a way up & out, yet again. here is to still living.