Philosophical Bullshit

I think i've started this post four times now and every time it veers towards the train wreck of philosophical bullshit and though it may be hard to believe even i get tired of my philosophical bullshit sometimes. Not all the time but some. Why can't i be satisfied dwelling on what fucking shoes to wear or perusing People Magazine, why can't i be complacent with the ephemera of the modern world? I could bitch and moan about the lot of the last few months, i'm sure some people would but it's not in my nature. There are no cosmic accidents in this cosmic accident, there is only life and the living of it. There are times when that comes more into focus than drift into fuzz, these days it's focus, outlined by fuzz. We all need kindness, compassion, and human interaction as much as need air and food and water... even a recluse and misanthrope like me.

If you smoke to much pot (i do) and read too much Robert Anton Wilson and Bill Burroughs (i have) you can find yourself getting caught up in numbers, like the Law of Fives or the 23 Enigma, you'll see patterns and events that happen in some mystical mathematical mystery, usually after they've happened, and then the argument can be made that was it really the law of fives or is it just the mind forming patterns from suggestion? but there i go again with my philosophical bullshit. The last week was one of those times where i could look back and find patterns galore or i could find nothing but kindness, compassion, and human interaction. Or as Billy Pilgrim might put it, so it goes...

First, there was some bands (that one above) to see. Just so happened that it was also the night of the first spring thunderstorm and ever since some fucking lightening struck a tree behind my house not far from where i was sitting i 'm sketched out by wicked storms. There was a brief moment where i thought of turning around, my rationale being that if it got really bad i needed to look after the boyos, but who was i kidding? i was just being a fucking pansy and wanted to hide in a room with no windows and so i pressed on and made it to the show. It's a tiny room, it's part of a bigger place (an old church) and you can step outside into a courtyard for a smoke, or in my case a toke. It was there that i met Irish Tara, an almost 6ft tall blond who took quite a shine to me. She tried to bum a smoke but ended up bumming a toke and getting ripping high. It was here that i encountered what i call the Exile Enigma. I guessed she was about 23? 24? which means i could have been her dad. She was a very touchy-feely sort and she wouldn't let me get away from her. In fact i actually pointed out how much she had begun to neglect her friend who had come with her, at which point she took leave of me but was soon back. I won't say it sucked to be receiving attention from a twenty-something blond because it didn't but this was going nowhere fast. The simple fact was i had to get up and make breakfast and get kids off to school and didn't have the time or the energy to stay up all night chasing my youth, and so in order to avoid temptation i snuck out the back door as soon as the show was over. I would have liked to thank Irish Tara though, it was a pleasant diversion to be the object of female attention for a night. Or to steal from KV again... Goodbye Blue Monday.

The next morning it was back to the grind and the usual week of errands, housework, yard work, home improvements, and whatever else the world could throw at me. The Breadwinner's best friend is an Ethiopian immigrant. So what's that got to do with anything? Well it just so happens that i love Ethiopian food, the same way i love dub and reggae and jerk chicken, of course this girl's mother is a fabulous cook who makes delicious food and took great delight in how much i loved her cooking, so now every time this girl and her family go back to DC or her parents visit, her mother makes it a point to get me food and this time was no different, the Breadwinner walked in the door and handed me a big bag filled with food, always doro wat (chicken in spices), injera (flatbread) and this time what i think was called itto, a cabbage and chickpea veggie dish, along with a couple of Ethiopian beers.  I've only ever met the woman two or three times and it amazes me that she makes it a point to get me her food. I call her my Ethiopian mother and am hoping that someday i will get a chance to cook with her, to learn the recipes so that i can make them for other people the same way she made them for me, it would be my way of thanking her for her kindness...

Now i'll freely admit i'm not much of a drinker anymore, i prefer the organic these days, my flower and fungi, but now and then something piques my interest. Dogfish Head once again brewed a special beer, this time in honor of the Flaming Lips and since the Lips have been getting much play around here these days with the Pops situation and such i decided to go and hunt some down. It's called Dragon and Yum-Yums with psychedelic artwork by Wayne Coyne and it's a tasty beverage. It' got a pink tint and looks quite a bit like Cherry 7-Up, it's bit different than my normal black pints and cheap Canadian swill (hockey season) but it's a fine brew. Now it just so happens the Flaming Lips are playing my fair city at the end of August, a show i was planning to attend but was waiting to buy a ticket cuz they're pricey for the man who is always skint, $42 before the shit Ticketmaster processing fees, and since the Pops situation is always in flux i was biding my time. Now a good friend of mine, an old roommate to be exact, told me his tickets were $150 bucks, i was like what? and so i went and investigated and alerted him to the fact he bought the special ticket that got him into sound check and a session of hanging out with Wayne himself and other assorted band members (according to the web site.)

The back story is i used to hang out with my friend all the time, he was a kid straight from the sticks when he moved to the Burgh, when we were roommates i used to help him out with free weed and pizzas, stand him drinks all night when i was the King of North Oakland, he's the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet. He used to lend me his car, which he loved and worried about endlessly, to go and score my pounds of weed from Hippie Jack way back when, years later when i was at one of the lowest points in my life i would sit around his apartment stuffing Bolivian marching powder up my nose until the sun was almost up, lamenting the mistakes i'd made and how shit things had gone, he'd listen to me ramble and we'd bullshit and listen to music, proving my theory that in every Rust Belt city between the hours of 3am and 5am someone will call the local classic rock station and request Cocaine by Eric Clapton, we'd leaned on each other at various times because that's what friends did.

My boy though had a drinking problem that almost killed him. He was a functional alcoholic but then one day he noticed some weird shit happening and when the doctor told him if he didn't quit drinking he'd die, he quit. At least for a time. I advised him to stay off the sauce but after a while he started back on again, not like he used to but still a few, when he probably shouldn't have had any. I couldn't bring myself to go and hang out anymore cuz i didn't want to be a part of it, didn't want to be an enabler even if i was the greatest fucking enabler to ever roam the east end streets, didn't want to be a party to watching my friend drink himself to death. And so we didn't really hang out much anymore and then i took to staying in and reading books and getting stoned and listening to music. The only time i really left my suburban hood anymore was to see a band and since he still lived in the old hood i don't see him much. We keep in touch the modern way, through texts and posts and comments, nothing like it should be or used to be...

So there i was one night, half stoned on the couch when my phone buzzed, it was my friend, he wanted to buy me a $150 ticket to meet Wayne Coyne and see the Flaming Lips cuz he said if anyone should get a chance to do that it was me and that he'd love to be there when it happened. I was blindsided by his kindness but explained to him that with my old man's situation i couldn't accept it, i told him it was one of the nicest gestures anyone had ever made to me but that i couldn't. Sunday afternoon i was loading groceries into the car when my phone buzzed again, as i'm apt to do i kept to my task and forgot about it until i had gotten home, then i looked and it was my friend, he said he didn't give a shit that i might not get to use it and that he'd bought me the ticket anyway... i was floored. I wiped the mist out of my eyes, i must have thanked him a hundred times and all he could say was he couldn't wait and was glad to do it. If all goes well, sometime late summer there may be a picture posted here of a certain grey-haired singer being bear hugged by a tall grey-bearded man...

It's a time when it would be easy to give up on humanity, i wasn't all that impressed by it before a spoiled orange man-child decided to bring out the worst in us, but yet we stumble on and when we forget all the bullshit we help each other immensely. Sometimes we need to give and sometimes we need to get, to be the recipient of compassion and kindness reminded me that all darkness is balanced by light, all ying balanced by yang. That sometimes an attractive woman leaning into you and talking while the band plays your favorite song is all your really need. It doesn't need to go any further or be pursued, it's just one gorgeous moment in a string of never ending moments. That is of course, until they end. And so it goes... another half-assed post of philosophical bullshit...