Smiling Copper Dragonfly

From putting Bogey, the Big Dog, inside the house, a tired and foul mooded Dog Mama turned into a world where fairies do exist.

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Feisty

A man called her feisty.

He said he liked feisty women.

It was a compliment, so it was ok.

 

She had stopped being offended by feisty,

And other so-called compliments like

Fiery, spunky, plucky, spirited…

That some chose to say.

 

Life is too short for excuses to hate men.

Besides, they are harder to fuck that way.

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Conversations with Indiana Musicians

When I visited the Midwest a couple of weeks ago, me and the family took a little trip within a trip. My parents live in Illinois on the Indiana border. My father rented an SUV and me, him, Mom, Brother and his Gal, and a Dog all headed to Southern Indiana. We went to a couple of beautiful state parks, including Clifty Falls; visited the Thomas Family Winery in historic Madison along the Ohio River; and, stayed at a really cool, super dog friendly hotel in Columbus.

Down in Nashville, Indiana – a quaint and groovy little tourist town – we hung out at a Microbrewery. (There was an unfortunate incident with Bubby, our Boxer, but I won’t get into that). They had live music on the patio, a singer/guitarist was featured.

“Who’s he sound like?” Dad leaned over to play his Betcha Don’t Know Game.

“Neil Young.” Of course I knew. Who the hell else sounds like Neil Young?

When the musician went on break, I chatted with the lanky, around fifty, slightly built, nerdy redneck with a buzz cut, wearing old jeans and thick glasses. “That was great! Do you play here all the time?”

“Oh yeah,” he had one of those wonderful Southern Indiana accents that non-Midwesterners would mistake for Kentucky. “I play all over. In Columbus and all the bars.”

“And you work? You like it?”

“There’s work, sure, but it’s competitive. Guys pulling crazy shit…But I don’t do it for the money or the attention…”

“You do it because you have to.” I knew exactly how to end that sentence. I’d heard this all somewhere before.

“Yeah.”

My folks were getting ready to leave, so I said a quick farewell. As the family was heading back to the car, I lingered to look at the old timey buildings. From behind me, absent-mindedly uttered, “I need to smoke a bowl.” I turned. It was my Hillbilly Neil. “Oh man, what the hell am I saying?” he touched his hand to his forehead. He was right about that. It was still Indiana.

“Oh honey. I’m from Venice Beach. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

A little bell dinged inside his head, “I grow it in mason jars and in with my potted plants.”

I smiled and considered following him. I think that is why he had uttered his intentions out loud. The happenstance tone was merely to make it seem accidental. You have to be careful with musicians. Very, very careful. They know all about striking chords.

“Gotta catch up with my Dad,” I waved and trotted to my family.

A couple days later, when we had returned from our trip within my trip, I had dinner in Terre Haute, Indiana at TGI Fridays with my childhood friend and her family. This is a very different part of Indiana. Not much tourist appeal to the stinky Wabash River, the Creosote plant and the place where they electrocuted Timothy McVeigh.

Regardless, dinner at the mall was wonderful. The company is all that counts. I had not seen my friend’s mother in twenty years. Her sister was so funny and delightful, I couldn’t get over it. I never remembered her that way, but then, I hadn’t seen her in three decades. What the hell had I known as a child?

My friend has two sons, one who is a wrestler and getting ready to enter college. I had been reading all about him on Facebook. The older one is a musician who plays nine instruments, including guitar, banjo and mandolin. I had not know this last fact, until that day.

I loved this young boy, a wonderful pale teddy bear, his shoulders thrust up to short red hair and sideburns, rolling his back into the accident baby’s “I’m sorry I’m here” posture – a held physicality I know all too well. He is married to his childhood sweetheart, the young woman he has been with since they were fourteen. He is an atheist, but not the angry kind. A gentle young man who pays close attention, he has to understand before he believes.

“So, do you play with a band?” I asked, wondering why someone like him would be in this part of the Midwest. As I had observed in Southern Indiana, around Brown County and IU, there is actually a decent music and art scene. But again, we were in Terre Haute…the “armpit of America” as Steve Martin once dubbed it.

“I had a band at school, in Florida. We recorded out in San Diego.”

“You don’t play with guys around here?”

“Well…” my new young friend lowered his eyes in genuine humility and softened his voice to match, “It’s hard to find guys around here who play at my level.”

“I bet.” Something about him made me trust, implicitly, his self assessment. I knew he was talented.

He went on to the second major issue, one not exclusive to geography, “And, then a lot of guys just want to sit around and smoke pot. So we don’t make any music.”

“I can see that.”

“Or…” and I should have seen this coming, but I forgot where I came from, “They just want to play Metal.” There was a little nausea in his throat.

“Of course they do.” I almost laughed, but the thought of this poor young man and his banjo and a Death Metal Cover Band in some forty year old guy’s mother’s garage…

I told him a few funny musician stories and quotes from guitarists I knew in San Francisco and LA. My young friend shared some secrets of the trade, confirming long held suspicions I had about his sort. So sweet, so open and so honest…I so enjoyed his youth.

“Get out West!” the last thing I said to anyone right before I left, my belly full of Jack Daniel’s salmon and fried cheese. Even if I am scared of how it will change him, I recognize a fish who was born into the wrong pond.

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Urban Nature IV: Getty Gardens on a Late Sunday Afternoon

White flooding hope licks crimson revelers held staunch by cool, uneven shadow, kindling goldenrod crystal passion…

Amber leaves bristle, ” Come hither” to a shy purple flower. She covers her mouth, coyly, with gossamer orchid fingers.

Ah, my old friend, Bee. I cannot resist them…Says something about me, I suppose, that Grandma was deathly allergic and and I am fascinated by these creatures of endless duty.

Prickly, green sea-foam pops red and violet mermaid whimsy. Emerging in schools to breathe sunbeams – on undetectable pitches (in twelve part harmony) – they sing.

Simple and sturdy, golden thread touches and the wonders of organic structure. Nature’s fingernail brushes on Creation.

Sweet Daisy. Open, free and easy…Left on my own, it is what I strive to be.

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White Devil and the Game of Dreams

L

It was about ten years ago, in Chicago. I lived in this great apartment in Ravenswood with my best friend at the time. We had a walk-in pantry, dining room, sun room, corner spot, top floor…

Back then, I was an actor. I had a White Devil Agent, one who was notoriously evil among actors and whose public shenanigans were legendary. I call him the White Devil Agent because, in addition to being an agent, he was a White South African of British descent – the real mother fucking deal! (Though, I should note that the other two White South Africans of British descent, whom I know, are not devils, but amazing people. One (my mentor and acting yoda) did interracial theater – underground, with his actress wife – in Cape Town, at a time you could be secretly executed for doing so…)

My White Devil Agent, though he seemed to be against racism, had a raging sense of entitlement from which most of his bad behavior emanated. He could look you in the eye and tell the most amazing lies. He was charming and intelligent and so passionate about theater, especially Shakespeare. Ok, he was also bitter, petty and cruel, but not all the time – only when you were vulnerable…

Later, while killing time at an audition, I would share personal tales about this guy to a circle of fellow thespians, who all had their own White Devil Agent horror stories.  Upon finishing my turn, everyone was silent for a bit. Finally, one of them put his arm around me and said in a quiet, soothing tone as if I were an injured animal, “Wow, Peter had his own special kind of hell for you…” Yep, I had been special…

One particular day when I was still deep in hell with the White Devil – to whom I had foolishly given my dreams – I was in the kitchen, chopping. My roommate was at the stove. It was early. We were making frittatas.

My roommate was upset because I had received a strange card, the day before, from my White Devil Agent, following a spat where he had deliberately excluded me from post-class drinks. This was immediately after a session that my agent and teacher had led me through an emotional break down and had been oddly physical. White Devil Agent had feigned innocence when confronted, fawned endlessly about how he would never deliberately do such a thing to one of his most talented clients, and promised to make it up to me.

Soon, I received a card in the mail decorated by two intertwined golden hearts with a lovely, though ambiguously toned, handwritten note inside. Happy, but confused, I left it on the table and dashed to rehearsal. I had hoped making it up to me would mean an audition at Steppenwolf or the Goodman Theater; but oh well, as long as Peter cared…

When I returned, my 5′ 6″, 140 pound roomie was in a rage, waving the card he had found in my opened mail: “What is this, honey?!? What the hell is this?!? What? Is this asshole making inappropriate advances on his client or is he a mother fucking manipulative queen being all fussy over his diva?!?” My roommate was gay. My agent had been rumored to be bisexual. I had a crush that he liked to use against me when I caught him in professional lies. My roommate did not like it.

It came up again while making breakfast the next morning – the aforementioned frittatas. My roommate had worked himself into another little fury, probably because I had remained so passive. In a raggedy white T-shirt and his tri-colored, near knee-length sleeping shorts, my little buddy pounded his spatula against the skillet, “Honey, I know you do not play games, but other people do! Would you get that in your fucking head before somebody kills you!!?!!”

Nobody has killed me yet. But, sadly, I do finally realize that people play games. When people play games with your dreams, it is hard to extricate yourself, because you believe someone other than you holds your hopes in his or her hands. When you play games with your own dreams, you might as well throw them into the incinerator.

If you must give them away, hand your dreams to God. They do not always come back, but they do rest in peace.

After defining myself in a certain way for almost twenty years, I accepted that I am not an actor anymore. I accepted that, because it made me happy.

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Addiction

I am addicted to swimming in the Pacific.

A perpetual wader, knee deep was as far as I once would go.

I float out now.

My feet cannot touch the sea floor.

At the mercy of rolling and crashing and saltwater up my nose,

Headfirst – thrust up and back – I completely surrender control.

Had I this addiction from arrival in Venice,

I might not have had sex with the wrong sort;

Like the the suicidal Indiana Catholic and the stress shattered Israeli SEAL;

Or, the divided and severed, monumentally insane, Argentinian guitarist.

Oceans hold more than weak men.

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Guitarist in the Yard

Last night, I awoke, naked, to discover a guitarist in the yard.

Hiding under Grandma Toots’ orange and green afghan, I tried to go back to sleep.

Slumber impossible through spotty plinking and the warbling of familiar melody,

I slipped into clothes, then under the stars to join a hearty throng of three.

 

Wood and strings screwed around on, adeptly, by a wasted man singing so loud,

I thought sure someone would call the police.

A beer spilling doggie tail sent bottles swooshing;

While Stairway to Heaven (picked as a joke near a hot iron stove),

Rolled laughter through good company.

 

Hitting my bed after midnight – in comfy pajamas -

Nothing on my mind, but the awesome surrender of sleep…

“We lost the crowd,” I heard murmured outside my window,

Just before I gave myself to dreams…

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee.