Vanderpool Crossing

We lit out Friday night heading northeast on highway 20 to Vanderpool Crossing. Sweetie had heard that there was an estate sale going on up there from a friend, who also collected snow globes. She's always had a penchant for the antique globes and in the last few years had taken to collecting pre-WWII ones with Bakelite bases. The woman who died had been her friend's teacher from her grade school days I guess. She had met up with a logging truck repairman and moved into his house near the Okanogan National Forest. It was a hard life after the timber all dried up and the last few years of her life were spent scraping by on her teaching pension and a few items she auctioned off on E-bay. We left Friday night because sweetie wanted to be the first ones there when they opened up Saturday morning.

We spent the night in our sleeping bags in the back of the El Camino looking up at the stars and talking about if Jesus was cool or a geek. It was my contention that he was cool cause why else would people follow him around writing down all the stuff he said. Sweetie was thinking no way could anyone from the Middle East be "cool". Ever. At any rate it made a cold night pass a little faster and at 6 a.m. we were parked outside the estate sale, ready to go.

By the time they opened up the doors, Sweetie had already picked out the one she wanted through the living room window. It was an old penguin sitting in a three quarters full globe. Inside they were asking 38 bucks for it but Sweetie talked them down to 30.

She didn't say much on the way home. Just staring into the dirty water at the little faded bird. I've never asked her why she likes those things so well. I'm sure whatever mystery is there, probably isn't too far under the surface. Just scratch a little, bleed a little and any ones life is an open book. Heading home past all that clear-cut though, you're not sure you need all of life's answers in a wide-open space. There's a world outside your line of site in every forest I've ever been in and I think Sweetie feels the same way about those snow globes. The mystery is why you read the book and it's also why you get up out of bed everyday.

We got home that afternoon and the boys were just waking up from their naps. After letting the older one shake it and the younger one put it in his mouth, Sweetie put the globe up on the ledge alongside the others. We stood there for a moment watching the snow drift to the bottom of the glass and then took the boys outside to play.

Sweetie found it hard to just let the snow settle though and for the rest of the afternoon she kept going back to the ledge, shaking things up.

Nothing...Music

I had wanted to start this week with a forum on music recording. Talk a little about what I've been up to in the studio and what music I been writing. I have a converted tool shed off the far end of the mobile home where I keep my computer and studio equipment so they don't get underfoot when your pacing the trailer at two a.m. trying to get the little one to fall back asleep. Unfortunately the computer problems I have been having as of late haven't allowed me to do this. I have been spending far too much time on the technical aspect of my life and far to little on artistic endeavors.

I have found it's not enough to just keep ranting about my troubles with the vengeful god in Redmond. True, without him I would not be having these problems, but he has given me the fruit and now I will forever need to quench my hunger with it.

I have been through all the stages: denial, anger, beer, VH1 behind the music, more beer, shopping.

To tell the truth my problems add up to very little, (except excessive use of the john) when compared to anything outside of my sphere. This is not a liver transplant, an end to war, gene therapy research or even the fixed outcome of the last presidential election.

This is just me wining about this and that, feeling sorry for myself in the fact that I can't get my PCI card to jibe with my new motherboard. Yea, it's a little pathetic, but sometimes a little small world pathos keeps the worlds bigger problems from kicking your ass.

Dancing

Last night before I went to bed the moon rose over the little stand of Cedars that line the bottom where the road turns. Sweetie had to work late so it was just me and the boys. I had got the guys all ready for bed and that's where they should have been but instead they were out with me looking at the moon and asking when's mamma coming home.

Sometimes when you're so tired your bones hurt and you can't stand up straight. Sometimes late at night it's hard to keep your balance and keep from falling over. You start asking questions of yourself, of your worth. You get the most annoying songs stuck in your head or think about a time when you were embarrassed when you were a kid.

It's easy at times like this to think that everything good is dead. That whatever prime you had wasn't much and a long time gone. But sometimes what's easy isn't exactly what's true.

The oldest boy climbs down off the steps and runs around in the cool wet grass near the carport. He's feeling the part of outlaw because he's in his pj's outside in the dark. Me and his brother watch him running back and forth karate chopping the night, one more battle in an endless war of good vs. evil is waged and won.

His brother and I are laughing at this imperious ballet. This goofy crime fighter, this protector of good. It's then that you know that everything good isn't dead, it's a ghost. It's a shadow figure dancing between mud puddles and the moon.

The tips of the cedars light up and I can hear the familiar sound of the 402 coming up the road. Sweetie's home and I'm in trouble cause the boys aren't asleep. I'll just have to see if I can convince her that the boys are in bed and these are just shadows of all that is right in the world.