Red Lounge Saint

Summer Blues

19 July, 2006

The heat is on Boston. Last night, lightning shook. The real rain came around midnight to wipe the scum of the streets. Slumberers got temporary relief from July with cooler air but by morning the roads have dried and the sun burned again. Usually I prefer the heat.

I haven't slept well lately, restless with the warm blanket of humidity but also restless with the same heavy loneliness I brought with me to Boston. Pandora had her box, I have my large duffel bag. Recently, I feel like I had a falling out with the techie artists crowd in Boston. I need a break from the Burners. The couple comes by occasionally but can't seem to cheer me up. I want to be alone but I don't want to be lonely. It's the summer blues. While the world packs up their plastic pails and folding chairs to head to the sultry beach, I sit in a corner of my empty apartment and wonder where life went.

I know I can't stay here much longer but I don't have the courage or convictions to just get up and leave. The tenuous strings attaching me to this city are fraying. I'm pretty much a tired zombie at work. I no longer care about the experimental details so I spend too much of the day looking busy, prowling the building, or sending e-mail. I count the hours until I can leave, shave more time off my arrival and departure times. I sent enough mail earlier in the week, so now that 10:39am rolls around, I write just to myself.

I'm tired of taking one step forward and two steps backwards. I keep trying and trying. I put myself out there, friendly, open, genial, accommodating, but I hit one land mine - blam-o - after another of failed starts to dating or discord over friendship. I'm covered in some icky patina that only others can smell. For now I retreat back into my shell and into my house. As they say in the movies, don't call us, we'll call you.

Life will go on. I gave up alcohol and intoxicants until the end of August to see whether their absense will stabilize my moods. I busy myself with business. Writing, cleaning, fixing, buying, these are not just ends, they are means to make me feel productive on my own. I continue to run circles around the lake. I fixed my bicycle. Maybe I can get the disco ball attached to the Pope hat. Sigh. What again is all this for?

Firefly Excerpted

19 July, 2006

It all started when Sage returned from the Playa Del Fuego Fefstival in Delaware. She had several pivotal moments there over the Memorial Day weekend and wanted to record her memories and images. Weeks of writing ensued. The Firefly Festival in Vermont over the Fourth of July weekend was so chaotic, inexplicable, curvaceous that I had to get it all down. Weeks of writing ensued.

Forty pages of text emerged, a novella. I can’t print the whole body here. It’s too personal, bizarre, and intimate. Nonetheless, like the New York Times Review of Books, I excerpt and abridged a little of the story to publish here. We begin late Sunday night at three in the morning. If you really want to read the rest, you are just going to have to beg, wheedle, and write to me. Even then, I don’t want the story to get away from me.

***

I knew where I was going: Glitch camp, of course, a huntsman in search of his quarry. I stopped at the hanging metal sheets, an interactive-acoustic sculpture outside the Hookah Lounge. With a set a drum sticks, I banged on panels, hub caps, poles. I remembered encountering this piece several nights ago with Meridian and thinking, "Whoah, this guy is a trained professional on this equipment." We planned to come back at a less opportune time so he could show off, but we never re-connected. So I banged away.

I had arrived with a camp of five but I spent most of my time wandering with others. Dustin started Firefly drunk and passed out. Josh was Dustin's companion, and with his friend Sneaker around, they traveled a little like a pack. Meridian slept lots and was gone early Monday morning, or was it Sunday morning? Sage did her own thing as well, grand dame of the Tea Kitchen and so connected to all the Boston tribes. Thrown to the winds and flood, we gravitated, sorted, and fell like wheat from the chaff in piles of our own people. I was looking for the extroverted eccentrics, the eye of the hurricane.

Glitch camp was busier than before. Taylor was throwing down break-beats and beating back the crowd. I saw her in the distance talking to the other videographers but she didn't come over. Was our affair ended before it began? I no longer knew what I was wearing: horns? CDs? wings? Now, though, I felt ridiculous. I hunkered down next to John Major and his hubbie Tom. Both were furry tonight. In the cage, two people danced against the bars. There was little left to do.

I left as soundlessly as I arrived. I descended the hill through the muck and into the forest, slipping and jumping from the woods to the path. The sun was rising. And then I had my moment. The sky above the trees was pale yellow, the gloaming of the morning. The trees silhouetted black. At eye level, dark greens and dark browns were barely visible in the night. Lower still, mud and reflecting pools of water. Along the side of the path, heading down the hill was a line of green lanterns on three-foot green hanging posts, Leonid's magical lanterns. Simple, beautiful, a way-finder. The path was free of people. Except for the throb of techno, I was alone in the woods with the rising sun, the beckoning lanterns, the drip of soft water from the trees. This was Firefly. In its essence. Beautiful technology brought innocuously into the sublime forest.

I rounded the bend by the clearing. Every dawn, I had come across one person, a different one each morning, still and standing, mute, eyes pointing out to the clearing to watch the rising sun. Another night over, another party done. What had happened to us? What was there to make of the madness? Nature had blanketed us in water and dirt. The state of emergency was internal as well as external. Like Brendan's walking stick ashed over in the fire, we were tempered by the experience. I felt weary, yes, but also stronger. It was time to rest.

Social Insecurity

Tax Year 2006

The government knows where I live. Rather, they know what I earn. Like everyone else in this great land, I got in the mail recently a Social Security Statement. I thought it was a bill for back taxes, but instead, Uncle Sam sent me just a reckoning of my net worth. Guess what, I'm wortheless. The IRS has kept track - better than I have - of my reported earning since I started earning. Here are the figures, and don't laugh.

1988 - $1,542 (I was 16)
1989 - $364 (slow year)
1990 -    $0 (finished high school)
1991 - $2,265 (big money)
1992 - $350
1993 - $1,932
1994 -    $0 (finished college)
1995 - $8,028 (summer lecturer at Brandeis)
1996 -    $0 (away in London)
1997 - $666 (salary of the devil)
1998 -    $0
1999 -    $0 (grad students don't make much)
2000 - $6,036
2001 - $4,465
2002 - $23,100 (my year in Austin)
2003 - $12,000 (moved to Dutchyland)
2004 -   $1,246 (the Dutch don't pay much)
2005 - $67,101 (big time earner)

And yet, as I look over the paltry numbers, I realize there is no correlation between income and happiness. Some of my best years have $0 or $1,932, and the last year was one of the hardest for its introduction into adulthood. Once again, I can live on much less, and it's about time I find a passion that is more fulfilling and less just a large number to report each year to the government.

Texas Girl

All around Boston, 8 July 2006

I’ve lived at the Palace for sixteen months, and in that brief span, almost all of my friends have visited. For some weekends, the bedroom feels like a hotel and the lounges feel like, well, lounges.

Several months ago, Alyson rang to ask whether she could come to Boston. We met in 2002, both living in Austin co-operative house called Laurel House. Alyson did have ulterior motives with her visit to Boston, you see, as she wanted to see a concert in Boston as well, not any concert, but Madonna. Yep, one named singer, named after the mother of Jesus. Sure, I answered, come aboard. I thought first that she arrived the beginning of June when I was in the thick of activities, but the dates were actually in July, a period of conveniently empty despondence.

I woke Saturday morning disoriented after three hours of sleep and too much vodka. I wasn’t drunk but I felt like it. I slogged off to the Zipcar and hustled myself to the airport. Alyson was waiting at the curb but not long. Fortunately, she was tired too from a cold overnight flight from Denver. It was her first time on the East Coast, a novelty for a Texas (Okie) girl. This day, though, even the toll takers were friendly, responding to Alyson’s enthusiastic good cheer.

I thought we might go home and sleep. Instead, we hauled ourselves to Rosebud diner for breakfast. In this old Somerville train car, I ordered up some blueberry pancakes with lots of coffee. We continued our coffee drinking at Diesel eyeing the lesbians. We sat at home so Alyson could unpack in several rooms.

It was Saturday and the day for the Haymarket. I suggested we hop the subway into Boston. The sun was out but the sky was a bit hazy. The Charles Street bridge was closed to the subway so we walked from Kendall/MIT over the bridge into Boston. We wandered up Beacon Hill stopping for a slice of pizza at Upper Crust. There was a festival on Boston Common and lots of little kids frolicking in the frog pond. Odd that I can watch little kids as part of a couple, but go alone, and whoah, that’s strange, old man. We passed the Granary Burial Ground and the Omni Parker Hotel.

We stopped for ice cream and walked over to the Haymarket. I bought a mess of groceries including some fruit that rotted quickly over the weekend. For Friday and Saturday, a warehouse area fills up with vendors selling flats of fruits and vegetables. Almost everything is a dollah. The prices are low cause the sellers are trying to get rid of stuff the supermarkets don’t want either because there’s a glut of rutabagas or the lettuce is about to go off. Alyson was shocked at a big bag of cherries for one hundred pennies. The vendors were their typical asses. I got another slice of pizza.

Laden with produce, we hit Quincy Market. Alyson wanted clam chowder and I knew the stall to try. We sat for a bread bowl of chowdah and a little slice of New England.

I rang Sage up. Alyson and I were in Boston, close to Sage’s South End apartment. Although we were getting tired, we hopped the subway out to the House of Sage. She made up a pot of chai tea while we lounged on her wonderful couches. Sage and Alyson discussed the Rainbow Gathering, the festival from which Alyson just returned. On the way out, we hit the roof of Sage’s building for a magnificent, sunny view of Boston. Hadley rang from Boulder; I thought (and was hoping) it was a girl from North Carolina.

Meridian had booked us tickets for the ten o’clock performance of Blue Man Group at which he was performing. We needed to get home to chill out. The subway still wasn’t running. We forked over twenty-five dollars – fuckers – for a cab home from Park Street. Money does solve problems. We ate a few empanadas and then got back on the subway. It was long day of travel for Alyson.

Blue Woman

Theater District, Boston, 8 July 2006

The Blue Man Group performs regularly in a little theater on Warrenton Street somewhat near Boston Common in the theater district. We arrived with a little time to spare. It’s not a big place inside, cozy, but the group does make out well with high ticket prices and a lot of regular shows.

Ushers handed out paper toweling to make impromptu head bands. A good vibe was spread neatly over all. It’s entertainment after all. I got nervous for Meridian, hoping he wouldn’t fuck up, and of course, he didn’t. Remember, he’s a trained professional even though he parties like a mother-fucker.

I didn’t know what to expect. I was amazed. Because the three Blue Man don’t speak, a lot of their communication is expressed through gestures and facial emotions a little like mimes, a little like drummers, a little like dancers. It’s so off-the-wall different that I got engrossed in the spectacle. In one bit, Meridian catches twenty or so flung marshmallows one at a time in his month that he later spits out as a large marshmallowy cone. Through the performance, that guy eats all sorts of junk food like twinkies and Captain Crunch cereal. If you see him at a party, give him a twinkie; the site of the yellow pillow might make him nauseous.

The Blue Men come out into the audience. During one section, I swore Meridian looked me in the eye. He knew where our seats were. For the second half of the show, he did an amazing amount of drumming on a set of improvised organ pipes splashing paint and then on hanging, large, gong-like drums.

The three Blue Men brought a skeptical woman on stage for a wonderfully romantic and chaotic number. The show is cleverly designed, moves quickly, but has pauses for the poignant. The finale involved lots of twin pairs of twirling black-lit tubes suspended from the ceiling and streams and streams of paper covering the audience.

You know, I’m a chemist. Through experiment and data processing, I’m supposedly eventually to make humanity better technologically. And yet with all the fucking around I do at work with failed reactions and cancelled projects, I’m not so sure how humanity fares with my added input of forty hours a week. Blue Man Meridian night after night makes a whole room of people laugh and laugh and delight in wonder. That’s the kind of contribution I rather make, the interactive, immediate kind, and not this fuzziness involving NMR tubes and catalytic reactions. Thanks Meridian for your silent zaniness.

Alyson fell asleep on the subway home. We caught one of the last busses from Park Street and road the rails with a bunch of drunk college kids. I can’t believe from our early haggard start on Saturday, we kept pushing it until after midnight.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday for Texas Girl

Cambridge, 9 July 2006

We woke late, really late, like eleven. We had an empanada and then it was out the door. Unfortunately, all the places where I wanted to go were closed until later. Asmara Restaurant did not serve lunch on Sundays; River Gods did not open until three. Hungry, we walked to the Garment District, the most wonderful thrift store/costume shop/Burning Man emporium. I bought some pants upstairs and then dove through the dollar-a-pound heap of clothes for more. Thai kimono/sarong? Check.

Hungry, we stopped at Kyle’s apartment to dump off our loot and then headed to Punjabi Dabi, an Indian restaurant in funky Inman Square billed as “A Roadside Indian Restaurant.” Meals are served to order on a silver tray with lots of sides. We ate ravenously. Indian-themed ice cream shoppe Kristina’s is nearby so I scarfed down some burnt sugar ice cream. Kim and Kyle were happy to entertain and catch up about the folks from our Pop Science camp last year at Burning Man.

I moved the party to Red Bones in Davis Square. I couldn’t eat much, full still of Indian food, but I drank a dark and stormy followed by a beer. The Southern restaurant was packed on a Sunday night. Kyle devoured a massive plate of ribs while Kim, in opposition, worked through a combination of vegetarian side dishes like fried okra. We said a hearty goodbye to K&K and then wandered the Davis area on a warm summer night. We drank some more beer outside at Mike’s restaurant and then headed into Diesel to watch the lesbians. I had to get up early the next day for that most unfortunate of tasks – work – so we did not stay up late.

While I was at work, Alyson walked to Harvard Square and herself worked on her budding businesses. She has more jobs than a Jamaican. I don’t know how she has the time or organizational energy to keep so much afloat.

At home, I whipped up a Spanish meal of Majorcan pizza with Swiss chard and yellow peppers, gazpacho, empanadas with chorizo, and berry Napoleons with lemon cream. Fortunately, I made some of the dishes Friday night. All these little details for a regular weekend are here to remind me someday how I used to live my quiet life.

Material Girl

Boston Garden, 10 July, 2006

Alyson brought back many gifts from her adventures in Harvard Square: a card, reading material, magazines, even alcomohol in the guise of tonic and a big bottle of Tanqueray gin. I think she was trying to get in bed with me. Nah. While we looked for eighties clothes, we drank up, gin and tonic and more gin.

We ran out to the subway in the late summer afternoon with a bottle of more gin. The trains were running, I was in great spirits, many of the folks on the car were going our way. The concert might have be freaky expensive – one hundred dollah – but held at Boston Gahden, it was so easy to get to by subway, and once there, so easy to find seats. I’m getting old and appreciate convenience.

But how the music business gouges its fans. Concert T-shirts for sixty-five dollahs, I didn’t want to know the price of a beer, but a simple coffee went for three bucks. The men’s bathroom for once at the Garden was a ghost town. Gaggles of women, some in pointed cones, swarmed and screamed while harried husbands stared at the floor or checked out Celtics paraphernalia.

With a great roar, the show started. An enormous disco ball descended from the fabled rafters of the Boston Garden. The mirrored walls of the large ball unfolded like a morning flower revealing a charming Madonna. She’s fifty or so, right, but looks great. Fuck, she was jumping everywhere, beating the crap out of her dancing entourage.

I hate to admit it, but what a great show. More spectacle, perhaps, than music, but Madonna knows how to entertain. There were three large floor panel dancing stages that were also iridescent video screens. The center panel had a hatch into which performers would stand and mysteriously descend into oblivion. A cage hung for many of the numbers on to which random people climbed and swung. Ramps and walkways were zooming in and out between songs.

She sang it all: Ray of Light, Lucky Star, new stuff, old stuff, Like a Virgin while riding a huge black saddle rising and descending as on a gigantic merry-go-round. She put on hot, hot, hot black riding gear for one number and yanked her leather-clad men around while rear projected were images of horses and riders tumbling off horses, quite the abutment to Madonna’s own horse accident a year ago.

Since it was Monday night, there was no intermission. She rose in red on a giant crucifix to sing about AIDS in Africa. Alyson pointed out that at one hundred dollars a concert ticket, Madonna herself could make great strides to fighting AIDS if she put her money where her mouth is.

Two girls made out with each other a few rows ahead. We sat and stood and danced on a balcony way up in the stadium somewhere in the center. Video screens projected a lot of the action. A bored guido of a boyfriend sat next to his excitably dancing girlfriend right in front of us. I dug the roar of the crowd, inciting my megalomaniacal streak.

Towards the end of the show, Madonna put on her seventies garb, mostly all white. As she strut down the central catwalk, a cavalcade of roller skaters did circles and jumps around her. I guess 1975 is back in a big way. Gold balloons dropped in piles from the ceiling. The singer kicked a few in the crowd as she thanked Boston. There was no encore but I was happy.

We followed the crowd out in the warm night. We cruised the Boston streets through Beacon Hill to the Charles Street station stopping for some victuals at a convenience store. It ‘twas a good night. On our return Alyson packed a bit of her luggage. Three hours later, I wished her goodbye as a four-thirty taxi whisked her to the airport. Hope you had fun on your first tour of the East Coast. Thanks for coming, Alyson.

Firefly Redux in Cambridge

Cambridge, 7 July 2006

Naturally, the night before Alyson arrived, I had to get wrecked. Firefly had ended over the Fourth of July weekend, but there was a mini-reunion of sorts on Friday night. A group of folks called “Circle” scheduled an extensive dj line-up at the American Legion Hall along the river in Cambridge. I had to laugh some, because I attended a Circle party over a year ago in May. It was also a Friday night. I lay sluggishly then on my red couches staring at the ceiling alone on a Friday night, lamenting on the phone to Holly in Seattle about my lack of Boston connections. She hunted the internet, found a listing for the Circle dj party, urges me get off the couch and go. And I did, apprehensively biking down Memorial Drive past Harvard into an outdoor party by the Charles River. I didn’t know anybody, didn’t meet anybody, but felt happy to be out. A year passed and my fellow revelers have become my people. The faceless djs have turned into Jon Mission, Schwilly B, Psylab.

Holy collision of worlds. Eminent California chemist and former Stanford colleague AJ and his lovely wife Fiona were in town all Fourth of July week. They stayed at their New Hampshire cabin so I had not had the opportunity to chill with them. As they were slated to leave Saturday morning on an early flight back to San Francisco, we had just one night to party. I suggested the Circle party. They drove over. We drank massive Red Lounge Gimlets. AJ tuned my guitar while Fiona gave me career advice on technical writing.

We hopped the car to Harvard. Naturally, I got lost. AJ got anxious. Too many rotaries, dark parking lots, and buildings next to the river. We pulled into the American Legion Hall. The party was in full swing outside. I introduce the couple to Sage, and Dustin, and then a bunch of others. So strange to have Josh there as well; since I met him, Josh reminds me strongly of AJ in demeanor, smarts, humor, but well, not some of the other more, um, kinky details. I think AJ and Fiona were a bit shocked to find me in the midst of such a crew. Not the standard chemists anymore.

To the side of the party, Sage set up her benevolent Buddha. Next to it was Toshi’s brilliant three-foot globe on to which changing images were projected, including – so I’m told – a picture of me. The kids from the videography company set up their screens and video mixers and were going to town with the projections.

I got loaded. Naturally. We dove into the bar of the Legion Hall to order up two bottles of Sam Adams. Strangely, the back door of the hall led into a dark hallway through the men’s bathroom into the bar.

Outside, our crew lit up our poi. I spun fire, far too drunk, lit myself on fire a number of times, didn’t care, and just kept twirling. Let’s not do that again. Showing off is one thing, getting scorched is another.

I made a few mistakes, poking people. If this were a collision of worlds between my Stanford couple and the Boston Burners, I could play with the irony of their missing connections. I told AJ to ask Theresa “I’m looking for the eye of the hurricane?” Too bad, Theresa wasn’t Theresa, but a bewildered girl named Heather who thought AJ was searching for drugs. Oh, well, with some talk, I smoothed over that goof. I thought I would replay the game, had Karen with her orb tell AJ, “Don’t put broken glass in the closet because you will annoy Dr. Shaw.” Too bad drunk Fiona gets instantly paranoid when a strange woman talks to her husband at a party. She almost smacked the unfortunate Karen. I felt awful, tried to smooth it over with my talk. Note to self: don’t fuck with people as you will almost always lose.

Surprisingly, Geneva and boyfriend Rob were running the video projectors. So good to see them again as we had met first at PDF in Delaware and then last weekend at the Firefly Festival under rather, well, let’s call it fucked-up circumstances. So hard to talk to Geneva considering her appendage called a boyfriend, but I persevered until the second beer after which I made a drunken phone call to her from the lawn.

The night wore on. We turned into dancing fools. Sage and I argued on the grass. The music stopped, the equipment got put away. An after party was in the works at, surprisingly, the house of Debauchery, a warehouse in the Somerville/Charlestown industrial maze. Kyle and I jumped into his white, beat-up 1960s BMW with race-car lap belts and a gas-tank that needs some sealing. We drove out into Boston, three in the morning, cheery. We circled rotaries, made illegal U-turns, got lost again and again. Signs suggested the Tobin Bridge and I vaguely remembered a candy factory. I called Dustin who at home tried to flag me down with on-line mapping, but we couldn’t find the house of Nick and Jeremy. No after party for us. Come four o’clock, we cashed in our chips and went home.

Return to the Yellow Spring

Summer Solstice, 2006

Less than a year ago, my dear brother Ray moved west, young man, but not far enough to California. His car gave out of gas not even halfway, in Ohio of all places, and he has been stuck there since. Last fall, he took on a 1-year teaching position at Wittenberg University, a smallish formerly Lutheran school in decrepit Springfield, Ohio. Ray taught several college courses: general chemistry, a new course he devised called "The Chemistry of Art", and a one-strudent quantum mechanics class. The academic year went well, and at its close, the school asked Ray to stick around as a tenure track professor of physical chemistry. And so he lives for the indefinite future in indentured servitude in Ohio.

Wittenberg's base of Springfield ain't much to look at, but nearby Yellow Springs is a charming hippie mecca. The Spring is a small town cause hippies are scarce in Ohio. Nonetheless, the Yellow Springers are proud of their co-operatives businesses, funky coffeeshops, yoga studio, and the alternative education of the town college of Antioch. Ray lives in a dark but large apartment just behind a tattoo and piercing parlor off of the main drag through town. He brings his own mug to Dino's for a cup of coffee, knows the couple that part owns the wine shop, and even has a testimonial in the yoga studio. Yellow Springs may not be bustling, but it's down-home determinely good-natured community makes even me want to stick around for quite a while.

I visited Ohio for the first time last fall during the Columbus Day weekend. Summer rolls around and a celebration is in store. For ages, I have known the wacky Mitchner family. At Stanford, I dated one Dee-Ann. She hailed from Dayton, OH, and one of her bestest of highschool friends was Tess Mitchner. Well, Tess and I have known each other since she started teaching the underpriveledged in East Palo Alto, CA. Since then, Tess and I have trapsed the world through Miami, Santa Fe, Chicago, well maybe not the world, but a chunk of the United States. Why all this background? Well, Tess springs from an excitable family. Her stranger than strange father Gary turned sixty this year. Not only did he retire from a celebrated career chairing the English department at Dayton's large community college, Sinclair, but also Gay decided to through a big bash that spanned the week. Realizing that when Gary throws a party, he throws a party (sounds like a yo' mamma joke), I hopped the next plane out to commune with Ray and kick it up with the Mitchners.

Earlier in the week, Gary screened a French film, went hang gliding, and booked reservations at a fancy French restaurant in Dayton. I arrived late Friday night for Gary's dancing-karaoke party. Since Gary is turning sixty, wel,l he had to have a sixties party. Such theme isn't hard for brothers Dudek as Ray is awash in tie-dye and Yellow Springs never realized that macrame and patchouli went out of style. I doned a long-sleeve white and blue tie-dye. Ray picked me up at the airport with two pair of sunglasses and we were off to cruise the Dayton suburb of Oakwood.

Gary's little fete, um, raged at the community center across the street from their house. This little center was home to the Mitchner school dances way back when. Ray and I were surprised to find a small group of revelers, mostly out of town relatives and Sinclair students. Gary had shaved everything: hair, goatee, armpits. Through the course of the evening, he got rid of the fake afro and was dancing like a madman in a tie-dye wife beater. Tess's brother had a rasta wig. The karaoke was in full throttle. The Dudeks were stunned. Our family doesn't do this. We sit around and play cards, discuss the stock market, and estimate the real estate prices of the property down the street. We didn't stay long, not that it was a bad party, but we didn't know much of the family and we wanted to get going.

There's one bar in Yellow Springs. Well, there are more bars, but Ray comes back to the same one, a road house called Peaches that has great music on the weekends and a beer selection that compares favorably with most of the joints in Boston. We listened to an eager fiddle combo and drank a few beers. I got happy. In that weekend, I was to come back to Peaches two more nights to listen to two more bands. You see, Yellow Springs can be a bit slow.

Fortunately, on this trip I didn't want anything but slowness. Saturday morning, I got a coffee at Dino's (same place where Dave Chappelle gets his), fondled produce at the farmers' market, and then went miniature golfing at a dairy extravaganza called Young's. Ray beat me by two strokes but Young's is his home course. Afterwards, we doned helmets to hit baseballs in the batting cages. In my sleep, I hit baseballs, climb walls, and go on runs. It's what I am built to do. We refreshed ourselves on too much icecream and then fed the goats. Come afternoon, we took a walk in a park along a river. Afterwards, Ray grilled me up a buffalo burger on his hibachi grill. Here we are, two Dudeks in the hot afternoon Ohio sun, outside on a lawn next to a tattoo parlor, on two chairs with a little table, eating a great meal, having a drink or two. Wunderbar.

We changed duds for more of the Mitchner madness. Gary booked the swank Engineers Club in Dayton for his recital. He had been taking voice lessons and wanted to show off for his birthday. Suggested dress was black tie so I loaned Ray my thrift store tuxedo while I put on the white suit. Everybody needs a white suit. Ray's getting too big so he couldn't fit into the pants and the coat was, um, a bit too tight as well. Lay off the beer, Ray.

On the second floor veranda, Ray and I drank gin and tonics from the open beer. We chatted with the Mitchners. Tess chided me for leaving the thrift store staples in my suit. Eventually, after a canape or two, we were summoned into the ballroom. Circular tables, black and white portraits at head height of famous white engineers, ceiling studded with exotic animal heads like two rhinos, deer, a psycho zebra that kept staring at me, and an ibex or two. Really strange.

Stranger still was Gary in white tuxedo accompanied by his voice teacher on the piana. He sang about fifteen songs starting with the sedate Handel and Schubert, then moving on to crowd pleasers like show tunes: Cole Porter's Night and Day, Moon River, Hey Jude. There was a strange intermission towards the end of the act. The slightly older woman next to me, a current English professor, told us that she once was a cocktail waitress, and so got up to get us more gin and tonics. The intermission ended, Gary came back transformed. He switched the white tuxedo for a white clown suit with black buttons. His wife painted his face white with red grimace. "It's not a clown costume," Gary said, "It's a pierrot (sp?)". He sang Send in the Clowns and Happy Days are Here Again. Well, sixtieth birthday, invite all your friends, it's great that he Gary did what he wanted. Just a bit shocking.

Ray and I have travelled the world: Thailand, Germany, Amsterdam, Mexico. We search for the new. We found it. In the strangest of places, a animal-headed ballroom with a sixty-year old clown singing tunes to his wife and kids in tuxedos. Thanks, Gary.

We drove out of dodge and back to Peaches. Another fiddle band yodeled, but better than the band the previous night. The couple from the Emporium was back to keep us genial company. We bought a pitcher of beer for almost no money. I couldn't drink much; three gin and tonics were already enough. Ray and I caroused and talked and danced. The band ended with a song called "Two Dollar Bill." Aftewards, we stumbled home in the warm June night, not too far, as Yellow Springs has just one street. For a brief moment, I lay on the yellow line through town, reminiscing about my Amherst College winter stumble home down Route 9 from a Full Moon party at Humphries House.

Sunday, we woke late. I drank another coffee at Dino's while taking pictures of the interior. That coffeeshop is a special place to watch the rising of the town. A leaseless yippy dog wandered by. We met Ray's latest girlfriend, an animal trainer named C.J. The three of us headed back down the drag to the Winds, Yellow Spring's finest restaurant, for brunch. C.J. picked at a pleasant stack of pancakes. Ray and I split two dishes, one with cannelini beans, polenta, and spinach; the other I can't remember, the meal was so distant ago.

Sadly, C.J. doesn't have much upstairs. Talking to her made me realize how much the women I have known, either dated or had just as charming friends, are good for me, my brothers, and my family. There's an easy rapport, an interest, a curiosity, fostered between the Dudeks and my female friends for what makes us tick, an interest lacking in the sorely vapid C.J.

However, I did convince the gang to drive yet again to Dayton. We pulled into the quiet city on a quiet Sunday to tour the quiet Dayton Art Institute. Tess's sister Natasha was married here. Dee-Ann squeeked her violin through part of that ceremony. I was fascinated by the Institute's collection of photographs from Aperture magazine. The images were powerful: three women mourning a shrouded and bleeding man, a Nazi stormtrooper floating dead in a pool of water, a circus performer, even an aerial shot from a stark Burning Man. We moved upstairs to look at some contemporary art, like two life-sized figures made out of jellybeans, surrounded by flapping butterflies. It's not a gigundus museum, but it is pleasant. I prefer their contemporary art, but find their older works a bit derivative. When the museum closed at four and kicked the five or so people in it outside, we wandered the grounds watching the afternoon traffic over the Dayton bridges.

We had to hurry back and eat something before my flight to Boston. I stopped into Ha-Ha pizza, the hippie joint next to Peaches, to order up a large special. Dave Chappelle claims that Ha-Ha was called Ha-Ha cause in the seventies, the pizza place put - um - special toppings on their slices. I returned home to kick it with my brother, and then back to Ha-Ha to pick up the pie. Excellent.

Unfortunately, then my ordeal started. Due to weather - what weather? a little rain? my flight out of Dayton got cancelled. I was stuck in Yellow Springs another night. Ray and I watched some internet shorts and then headed out - where else - to Peaches. The thrash band playing was truly terrible. I was despondent and just wanted to get back to Boston. Eventually, I trundled back to the Tattoo Parlor for some sleep.

In the wee hours of Monday morning, the flight woes continued. My rescheduled flight out of Dayton got delayed three hours. Eventually leaving the runway, we circled Philadelphia for quite a while until our plane's fuel grew low. With no place to land, we got rerouted to Baltimore but just for more fuel. The plane door open, more fuel came into the tank, and we launched again back to Philadelphia. However, I had already missed a few flights back to Boston. My 11:30 got scheduled to 12:30, and the 12:30 got cancelled. I made a few frantic phone calls back to the office to tell them I couldn't make the day. I got put on 1:30 stand-by, finally got a seat, and then with more delays, I slogged off to Boston. Overly tired, I made my way from the airport, to my house, back to work. Only eight hours late for work. I'm not flying back to Dayton anytime soon. Nonetheless, thanks Ray.

All that is Lost can still be Found

The Palace - Last day of Spring, 2006

The phone rang at six thirty yesterday as I was working on a project in the quiet of my house. An enthused caller at the end of the line, couldn’t figure out the voice. “Who are you?” “Mmmm, mmm, mmm.” “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Who is this?” Is Chris calling? The connection is terrible. “R-o-b-e-r-t D-u-d-e-k. Robert, your brother. I’m calling from Copley square.” Jesus Christ, and I don’t use those words frequently.

Fifteen years have passed. After Robbie left home in a huff for the air force and beyond, we spoke no more. Communication probably ended when I was about twelve. We inhabited the same house but through fear and anger, we kept our paths separate except for the occasional glare in the hallway. Such scorn. He didn’t hate just me. He hated everyone. My other brothers. My parents. I’d hear about him sometimes, maybe once a year. After the air force, he returned to school, Northeastern, to pick up a nursing degree. From there, he entered the work force. The profession suited him as he could travel as an itinerant wanderer, six months here, six months there. He skied in New England, lounged in Florida. No connections asked, his past left behind.

Close friends might ask about him. I would have to lie or explain that we no longer spoke. All families are dysfunctional in their special ways. We had our black sheep, the outpouring of my parents’ inability to communicate. He long since stopped living as a brother. I have just two.

And yet, fifteen years later, at the last day of spring, in the early evening, I get a call. He’s in Copley Square, working at hospital in Melrose. Arrived in May, will leave in September. Wants to eat something or have a drink. His voice is different, he sounds like a Bostonian. I don’t recognize me in him. But he is so enthused. We talk briefly, maybe fifteen minutes, twice as long as I did with my parents. He’s in the dark about so much of our family life. Yes, my brother’s wife is pregnant again. Ray lives now in Ohio. I live in Cambridge, work in Cambridge.

I wonder what he looks like. He turns thirty-eight this year. Maybe he felt it was time to make amends. Life can be healed.

Reason #253

You must come to the Burn

(From Sage) Eventually I'd like to make art that burns, with that
intention. Cris mentioned a piece he saw that was a
trebuchet, (a giant catapult) made of hand-hewn logs,
with a tremendous amount of care. It took the artist
all week to make it and at the end of the week, he
used it to launch flaming television sets and then he
burnt the whole thing. Fuck, yeah.

The Molecular Foundry

Berkeley, CA - 13 June, 2006

It’s five o’clock, Tuesday 13 June 2006. I sit at Strada Café gulping a double Bianca Mocha without whipped cream due to a combination of lactose intolerance and exhaustion. The sun shines, the hipsters are the next table discuss Moscow underground museums. A man sketches, looks absently around. Home? I dunno anymore.

From nine o’clock today in freakin’ California I ran the gauntlet of interview after interview after presentation after interview for Berkeley’s new Molecular Foundry. I crept on a plane Monday night, a stealth bomber flight, JetBlue, direct from Boston to Oakland. The time was right to consider a career change, and also very wrong as the Tuesday work I missed cause I was advertently – cough, cough – sick this morning with a long-distance call to the secretary, the work I missed was an enormous tangle of visiting collaborators, starting projects, and shuffling papers. There shall be a lot of pieces to pick up on my return and I had best get horribly sick for once on an airplane.

I spent Monday night from midnight onward in Berkeley with the gracious Steve Andrews, career post-doc and avid paddler, and his new gracious fiancée Ester (only nominally chemistry related). I slept camping style, so similar to the weekend, on an inflatable mat and sleeping bag because the uninflatable Matt was gone to Florida to dive for data.

And so the day. I woke to scones cause Ester can’t cook less than eighty at a time – gotta use all that buttermilk, she thinks. Steve Andrews gave counsel and humor to my half-baked proposal and then an escorted morning walk to the chemistry building through streets like Telegraph that I have known so well but not so deserted as this and not so early in this morning, later seeming due to the three-hour time change and whirlwind that air travel incures. How do I wake in Cambridge, fall asleep in Berkeley, realize the similarity between the places but am overwhelmed by the empty spaces, the three thousand miles and change of people.

I spent much of this day on a new government/academic facility on the hill, mostly empty, full of hot-shot professors inquiring about my past, asking about my future. I met the director of the pleasantly sounding Molecular Foundry, the division director, the lead scientist, the staff scientist, even wondering when I would shake hands with the custodian of toilet sanitation.

Oh, do I interview well, a smattering of good cheer, inquisitiveness, forced connections, and innocuous personality. And yet, with a half-baked proposal and an empty building, I felt so lost. The avuncular French division director asked, “Tell me about your proposal. How much time in your talk will you spend on that?” I had only two slides out of sixty but had to admit, “Oh, at least ten minutes.” Oh, so wrong. Ten minutes of what? To see the soufflé collapse, the bread come out raw, the meat to be tartar?

Is it best to record my thoughts with the haze of ennui or should I let time settle my angst, rationalize away my confusion? This day was so good for me, to clarify my future, to point me towards something and have me ask, “Is this what I want?” And yet I am so lost. No, I don’t want exactly this, but what else? How can I change such good company in Boston, a stable but frustrating job, a yoga routine, a bike ride for work, trade that for something familiar – Berkeley – and yet devoid of company, friends, cherished spots? Shall I try to go backwards to my California past, do I hold on to the imperfect Boston present, or do I throw it all away for something entirely Monty-Python different like Nepal or Cinncinati?

The Foundry building was so empty. My community of like-minded fellows wasn’t there, but it’s not like I lean at all on my Boston chemistry colleagues. Thank the bloody stars for the hippie now across the street sitting on the fountain banging his guitar and wailing the words that I wish to wail. Sing on fellow. The Foundry wants individual research of merit, a self-starter. Such responsibility to excel, such task to be my own master. Fear is the great motivator, a sense of stretched growth, but when does it end? Maybe I just want to be comfortable and confident for once and not have to fake it all the time.

I want my peeps here. I want a funky place to live. I want a little vespa to climb the eucalyptus hills to my little Molecular Foundry when I am master of my small domain. I want a renewed sense of adventure, a powerful sense of possibility. I don’t want to leave behind my Boston life. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

But I applaud myself, clap both hands on my back, cheer the sky. I forced this interview, arranged this visit, prepared my homework, flew the fuck out to Berkeley and back in almost the same day, put a shine to my shoes, and returned. Whether they want me or not, I tried. Less than three days ago I was spinning fire in the woods. Today I expounded on iterative oligomer synthesis. Tomorrow I may make emulsions for non-emissive electro-phoretic displays. At some point comes designing a hundred candle lanterns for a tea kitchen and possibly retro-fitting a golf cart into a vast moving pyramid fortress. Oh world, I tried, I tried. Let them do with me what they want.

In the meantime, I shall take each day on its own merit. Let those that want to stand under my tree, enjoy the shade. The interview and its result are now out of my hands. My future will happen by silly, spur of the moment choices, and not by a concerted sit under the lotus formulating a master plan. The sun still shines. My Bianca Mocha comes to the end. Steve Andrews calls with enquiry of the day. Life can be packed in a bag and transported. I close my eyes and the world whirls around in the darkness.

Wildfire

Some Connecticut Campground - June 8-10, 2006

So, mid-thirties, in search of adventure, slow times, what’s next for me? Well, come this lazy June weekend, I went to the fucking woods, set alight two big balls of fire under the full moon and spun them on chains recklessly around my head. Amazing.

Chad is a recent Boston University MBA graduate. He also is a marvelous mover of people, a generous teacher of students, and an opener of hearts. We first contacted at his informal fire spinning class on Monday nights in a dance studio of one of the BU buildings. I wouldn’t have entered the room if it weren’t for Sage’s supportive urging. I wouldn’t have stayed if not for Chad’s patience and benevolence.

What’s fire spinning? Mostly it’s the acrobatic manipulation, much like baton spinning, of toys that have burning sections of Kevlar-reinforced fiberglass. Fire spinning synergistically merges dance, dexterous juggling, insanely dangerous fire, and some dark art. Although the range of fire implements is enormous from burning swords, whips, staves, and long darts, the grand dame of them all are poi, once a weapon developed by the Maori tribe, now two 2-foot chains held in the hand on which ends dangle bright burning wicks.

Come Monday nights, I’ve been learning and then practicing. Mostly, I chuck around two white tube socks filled with beans. The simple moves have names like the weave, thread the needle, corkscrew, with reverse variants. You struggled, learn, perfect a few moves, integrate them into a repertoire, and try transitions between what you know and what you invent to create a routine. It’s collaborative teaching but all male-fueled competitive, a mix of physical manipulation with a mental figuring out which hand goes where.

Spinning tube socks – whack – is one thing. Moving to burning brands – fuck that hurts – is another. Through lots of effort and love, Chad brought the community together for a weekend fire performance workshop and festival. The event is simply called Wildfire. The location is an Episcopal campground in rural Connecticut somewhat near Hartford. Because I thought Alyson was visiting – no, she comes in July, I didn’t think I would attend Wildfire.

Come Friday afternoon, though, and I’m packing a sleeping bag and clothes and two sock poi into a bright red rental car zooming over to Dustin’s place. We packed up a tent, some more camping stuff – we feel like we’re on the road all the time – and took off for Sage’s apartment in the South End. We picked her up, and suddenly it was 3/4 of the old crew.

We drove off on a rainy Friday night through Massachusetts. It’s not much fun to come to campground at midnight, even less fun for the clouds to open and rain to dump down. And yet our crew of three is so supportive that we put up the tents together on two wooden platforms in the woods. Drunken revelers ducked out the rain and extinguished their fires. We hunkered down for the evening. I was already glad to be camping again, the last time in the woods way back over Thanksgiving on the mountains of California overlooking Death Valley.

When we woke the rain had broken. Wildfire was less a party and more a learning conference, kind of like an American Chemical Society meeting on crack. There were series of outdoor classes on a variety of skills like spinning poi or staff. You could learn to drum or hula hoop. For the braver, there was fire swallowing or the converse, fire breathing.

After a killer-great breakfast, I stretched out on a little beach with Chad and a bunch of eager students. The campground has a small dock with aluminum canoes, a lifeguard chair, and a place for jumping. There’s a field for fire spinning, somewhat flooded due to an over-excited beaver dam. The woods in the back is for wandered and pitching the tent.

After stretching, I spent the morning hauling around a staff behind my back, over my hand, figure eight, around the world, shotgun. Staves are heavy and it’s harder to develop a rhythmic motion than with the twin poi. I frequently grabbed the end of the implement, a move that would mean burning disaster if lit. After lunch, I moved on to contact staff, churning the bar around my next, over the wrist, across the shoulders. The stick is rolled over the body, not thrown.

I took a break from staff to throw more poi. I don’t know many moves but I’ve got a simple routine together. Mostly I was surrounded by the maestro’s, especially two peeps from Philadelphia named Denise and Mike (or Icon). I practiced some hip reels, got frustrated with a move called flowers. Some teachers are better than others. Some know moves but can’t verbalize them. Others understand what it’s like to start anew.

What a short weekend. Meridian and I hauled out a canoe to paddle out to a raft platform and then further up and down the broad river. We spotted a rope swing with a careening naked girl – such is the Burner community. In fine form, we returned to shore.

Eventually the sky darkened. We feasted on more food – such good meals. I took a break for a thirty-minute meditation. A woman who introduced herself as a long-time solitary witch lead us to reflect on our own individuality. She summoned forth our air (thinking ), fire (lusting), water (emotion), earth (doing) sides, had us confront these traits, and then asked us to merge with them. I have recently had strong encounters with sharply divergent aspects of myself and so reconciling these corners is difficult for me to create a coherent whole. How to put together the fire performer with the quiet chemist with writer of novels and exuberant laugher? Nonetheless, the witch’s lantern meditation calls forth gravity, reflection, and warmth to what would be a magical evening.

The moon had risen brightening shadows and illuminating the hundred people congregating in the field. A kooky guy with a big truck set up on the side of the field equipment for a fireworks show. Dustin, Sage, and I pulled up lawn chairs to watch the spray of light and the echoing pop of powder. No holiday, no city, just a kooky guy setting a fireworks show under a full moon to music by “Sisters of Mercy”.

A bunch of folks had cut a cord of wood for three fire pits. A bunch more folks had brought drums. During the evening, the music alternated between the drumming sometimes with violin and fairly bad electronica.

Regardless of the sounds, it was time to burn. Draped on two fire breaks hung oodles of fire toys: fans, swords, snakes, poi, staves. The Vermont hippie, rasta lit up first with two large-ball poi some called Death Stars, poi so large you could hear the whoosh of the swinging fire. With his furious acrobatic twists and flurry of relaxed motion, the Vermont hippie rasta was fantabulous.

The party got started. Others started to burn. This is a responsible event. For a while, I along with two others stood as Safeties with black flame-retardant cloths. We watched the performers, ready to snuff out a stray ember or a burning body. There have been some serious burns in the past, mostly to the hands.

Our groups sat back in our beach chairs somewhat stunned. It was, however, time to burn. As I got a little tired, I got anxious. What’s this going to be like? I knew, though, that if I got in the car the next day and had not lit up, I would be loads disappointed.

I took off some clothes. You can’t swing firey things in a leopard-print overcoat. I grabbed Sage’s practice poi with cathedral ends (see, I now know the lingo), dipped the wicks, and strode out into the ring.

You see, it was time to burn. The wicks lit up dramatically from the can candle. The crowd cheered when they heard it was my first time. I spun the poi by my sides to scatter out excess fuel. My head and body raced focused on the fire, focused on little else. Spinning fiery orbs is like spinning socks. At least the mechanical motions are the same. Spinning fiery orbs is not like spinning socks. As I twisted around for the reverse weave, my head said, “What the fuck are you doing with these big-ass balls of fire?” and my body responded, “Damn, look at you spinning big-ass balls of fire?” I went through the moves with which I felt comfortable. During a butterfly, the poi wrapped around my wrists. Panicked, I jerked, the chains came free. Whoah, I’m not gonna die after all. Before I knew it, the balls turns yellow and blue, the flames died, my little, little performance was over.

My heart raced. I jumped. As the roller coaster slid into the bay, I wanted to get on the bay again. Meridian continues to spin with his characteristic languid, relaxed intensity. Sage lit up and shone. Funny her spinning with her black and furry white hat on. Dustin hit the stage, wowed the performers with his signature one-handed twirl of the poi above and below his right arm, above and below his head. For someone who has been spinning for less than two months, he spins fantastically, much better than I do.

Although Sage and Meridian had lit up a number of times before, our little conclave of four had all now experienced fire. Sage went another time and then a third. I lit up a second time, wanted to move more, felt the poi swing wildly. Oh, if I were only a bit better, had a few more combinations, could transition well. Practice, practice, practice, then burn some wore.

We watched some amazing performers. The rasta Vermon hippie spun more death stars, switched to dart, tried the staff, everything golden. A balding man in black swung flaming swords, paused to breathe fire. In a silver cowboy hat, Chad spun everything he could grab with such glee and motion, a kid who knows his work is done. Later in the night, Denise and Icon showed up and rocked the house. They performed together, arms almost locked, spinning behind each other’s backs. We tried to guess Icon’s name. The darked-haired elf has skills, moves that I didn’t know were possible: throws, turns, twists, rhythmic genius.

As the night wore on, we sunk further into our beach chairs as we watched the fire spinners. Lethargy took over. I felt disconnected to the performers. Maybe it was the overall competitive spirit or that so many of them were still in college, at least ten years younger than this old man. What did I have in common? I missed the quiet conversation of our earlier evenings at Playa del Fuego or in Sage’s warm apartment.

One o’clock? It was time to go to the dock. The four of us, the posse – Meridian, Sage, Dustin, and I – walked through the boggy field, up the road, past the kitchen, through the woods, to the little beach. The area was thankfully deserted as folks were either pulling out to go home or watching the performers throw fire. We stood, sat, and lay over the water. The moon was up and full, glowing on the metal dock, the lengths of overturned canoes, the brightness of the sandy beach, and the shimmering of the water. Our eyes adjusted and the world lit up. We talked quietly.

I snapped a picture on the dock, holding the camera still, with a long exposure. A vague Meridian appears on the film. The moon was full; I howled at it, the echo returning from the far shore of trees. Dustin departed. I pushed Meridian towards the creaky white lifeguard chair. It fit two. The scene – the moon, the dock, the canoes, the beach – serenely called forth images.

We snapped some more photographs with a fifteen second exposure, the longest the camera would allow. Fifteen seconds is a long time. Sage and I put into the frame ghost images of ourselves: Sage sitting, then moving, the two of us arms and legs spread. I had a flashlight, Sage had a headlamp. We painted light on the photographs illuminating the dock, the canoes, Meridian. Fifteen seconds of motion followed by seconds for the busy camera to add up all the photons. Another idea, another joyous run around the beach, another image. Meridian laughed high in his high chair. This was the moment we were looking for, three people, one moonlit night, simple fun with imagination and a camera.

The moon sunk below the trees. Our light faded. Meridian stayed on the dock, Sage and I encountered Dustin on the path. We gathered our folding chairs from the fiery field. The performers were still there but the numbers had dwindled with the fuel. It was time for bed. A cold Dustin crawled into his sleeping bag. I figured out that I wearing two sets of contact lenses. Sage and I looked for a foxfire plant. I was in good spirits, a buoyant mixture of fire and water.

We woke to the breakfast bell. The sun was out but I was cold. Breakfast was bountiful as usual. Sage taught me the decadence of whipped cream in my coffee. I ate and ate and ate some more. The morning classes didn’t materialize but everyone was tired but pleased from their last night burn. I stretch on the beach, threw around some poi with an encouraging Denise. Sage jumped into the water, returned to watery nature. Dustin found some warm gin. The clock struck one. It was time to drive home.

We gathered our belongings, made our goodbyes. It was a weekend of learning, initiation, and discovering the fire that burns within.

Espanol Finito

The Spanish armada came and I set their boats alight with small British fireships. I no longer fear the Spanish inquisition nor expect it. Ah, June has come and with it the end of school as well as the end of school anthems: hey, teacher, leave these kids alone. We don't need education, we don't need thought control. My walls still have bricks, but I rather throw them through the preterito of estar.

Riddles aside, my foray into the Spanish language ended with a whimper after two struggling courses. Life with "tenemos bailar" started so excellently over the winter with comraderie, a slow learn to count to ocho, and lots of frivolous conversation over whether Nicole, no te gusta Boston? The bloom fell off the lily when Racso turned into the Cuban Castro for the second class. His unorthodox teaching, bullwhip manners, and loading of homework made me fear Monday and Tuesday nights and all that Spanish homework I hadn't done. Conjugate eschuchar in six tenses? Fuck that. Fucked that. Will fuck that. Was fucking that. Am going to fuck that. Am fucking that.

When Fidel went absent without leave for two classes, you know May 1 is Labor Day and there was his passport problems, I lept at the opportunity for a 2-class refund. I told myself I would suffer the penultimate class, but as a reward, I would skippeth the last class. Tengo tocar cervezca. And so, last night, as a dragged diligent student, I put verb + preposition clauses in three different tenses. I glanced at the 100 most commonly used Spanish words, wrote Done 6 June 2006 on my notebook, and put all my Spanish belongings away.

Goodbye Espanol. I once wanted to order a burrito in the proper way, but I think "Dude, super burrito with black beans" is fine for now. It's not that my language aptitude dwindled, but as spring came, I moved on to different hobbies like Russian, no, just a different outlook. Life now isn't about assimilating minutia, but there may be a time sailing Lake Titicaca that I wished I remembered how to ask about tide tables.

Playa del Fuego

When you jump on the Burning Man band wagon, you sign up not only for a week in the Black Rock desert of steamy Nevada but also for all the other assorted parties that mark the burner calendar for the September to September year. A while back, a group in Austin decided they wanted their own little burn party, a gathering called Flip Side, held by a river every year for the Memorial Day weekend. With their success, other regional burns have sprung up, some in these parts.

The mid-Atlantic regional Burn, almost like a political caucus, holds sway over Memorial Day weekend from Friday night until Monday noon in the wee state of Delaware. Now I had never been to Delaware before, but on my return I can tell you it's quite a state: hazy, bright, friendly, disorientating, exhilarating. It's a small gathering, about eight hundred people, so compared to the thirty thousand that invade Burning Man, it's wee. However, because of its size, the crowds are more intimate and friendly. Less happens so during the day we relaxed. At night you jump around less; there no longer is that next whirling cacophany of lights in the distance.

The party dubbed "Playa del Fuego" sits on private land owned and defended by a rowdy but friendly group of grizzled Vietnam Vets. For the Vets, PDF is a highlight of the year, a time to let in the freaks and let down their hair. The Vets have their own ramshackle shacks as well as sacred spaces, no go zones where vets have been laid to rest and war dead honored. Spooky, a large ambulance military helicopter plunges from above on one end of the land. Because the vets own and protect the space, police aren't a worry and the revelers are free to do what they please. Some of the vets spend their day shooting off water balloons, judging the naked slip 'n' slide competition, and organizing our chaotic lot.

Ah, a party. We gathered up a strong group of four, each of us differently skilled, Dustin with his dome, Sage with her art, Meridian with his force of personality, and me, well, I still got the gift of gab. I rented a mini-van for the week, and it was unfortunately more mini than van so we had to pile some of our stuff in a cargo van driven by Dr. Sewell and Boston's Bean Camp. Such impractical camping. We brought furs, a collapsible couch, stereo speakers, black lights, wings. Stuff like the cheese wedge of a dome cover got tied to the top of the van; more stuff got put on top of that, secured with netting. Dustin's a master with putting things together.

After a few days of driving around picking up stuff, we headed out Friday afternoon, destination Delaware. We cruised through Massachusetts, Connecticut, over the Tappan Zee bridge, through the endless badlands of New Jersey, and into Delaware long after dark. We entered the gates after two in the morning with rain falling. We fell into a space, pitched some tents with the help of Fritz and some kind beer (ah, Heineken), and hunkered down for the night as the sun rose.

A few days later and we were still within the Playa gates but we had definitely arrived. Dustin had spent months putting together the pieces for a geodesic dome, an assemblage of metal struts, canvas, insulated mylar, even a floor. All that cutting, crimping, sewing on an industrial machine, planning, fitting. Crazy kid. Saturday, we put the beast together. We fired up the generator Dustin brought, hung two massive black lights, moved in Sage's magical black light art, and hooked up my amplifier to a set of speakers. Two Japanese box lanterns outside turned on. We were open for business. The crowds loved us; we rocked the Casbah.

The kitchen sat behind the dome next to a large van. Surrounding that were our tents. We figured out quickly that the insulated dome was better for sleeping as the air inside was cooler in the day, warmer at night. Naturally, we didn't rest until dawn. Food was a bit haphazard. I made gnocchi with pesto one night along with fruit salad, cutting the fuck out of my finger slicing a tomato.

Our group of four was massively cohesive, someone doing something to keep us organized, good spirited, tight. No strain, no fights, no tension. After Saturday night, we started thinking about taking the party on the road, possibly living together in a Boston warehouse space, leveraging our creativity and outstanding smarts. We couldn't figure out what to call our magical black-lit dome but ominousness stuck. Ah, the music, the wonderfully chill, exhorted music, playing all times of the day and night, a call to action, a call to bed, a call for us just to be us.

The three nights and two days are naturally a bit fuzzy. So much happened that my small mind can't remember all the details. It was hot, hot, hot during the day, frying most of us. At night, cool came and out came the freaks. I've tried to numerate the peaks below, little vignettes that I'll remember for quite a while.

Come Monday, we struggled away, our tent littered with sleeping bags, Red Bull, beer, metal cylinders, colored string, horned hats, sleeping bodies, reveries. I sketched sleeping people on black paper with sweeping strokes of a silver pen. My natural need to pick up took over. In the growing heat, we barely consciously broke down the world we had created, packed it in the mini-van, and left our tiny nirvana. The drive back was long and yet the adventure was so grand that the distance didn't matter. The miles were less than the gulf between PDF and our humble working lives in Boston.

These parties are fun, but more and more, I want to make a lasting creative contribution to my life and my space. It's hard to meet people so quickly, so intensely, and then just leave them a day later. There was Spoon in her googly-eyed black cocktail dress and Beatrice who got my groove back. Whither are they now? I'm ready to build something big, maybe something with blinky lights, maybe put together a space.

Next up: Firefly regional Burn in northern Vermont over Fourth of July weekend. I'm already tired.

Delaware Musings

Whoah, what the hell happened? Um.

At two in the morning, I danced barefoot dressed with a pair of wings and tail, in a field of mild Delaware, with a beatific woman named Beatrice that got my groove back, dancing on top of a furry cadillac convertible, jumping from seat to seat, on the frame, the shocks jumping, the car twisting, the party just below, a couple breathing jets of oily fire, a woman twirling in an orange hoop skirt and a large white wig. Beatrice jumped. I climbed to the dash, the pink fur great on the feet.

I sat stunned on a grassy path looking upwards at a tilted, army-green ambulance helicopter plunging from the Vietnam war. Its cabin filled with an eerie blue light, shadowy ghosts roaming the cockpit on Memorial Day.

The sun beat down. I turned a hula hoop to a song that repeated "Let the Sun shine in." Taylor swirled in a Thai kimono, a mass of twenty hoops twisting every which way. A woman in pink arced a large hoop ecstatically around her neck and up her upstretched arm, a symphony to the love of a warm spring day. Minutes before, two jugglers swam pins in front and behind my body.

We four hunkered down in the late evening, just before dawn, in a twenty-foot geodesic dome, covered with solid triangles of mylar. A blue, comforting light streamed out of our low triangular doorway. Inside, the center was ablaze with ungulating mass of brillant green and red vertically hanging strings that tickled the heads of those laughing madly beneath. Black-lit art circled the ceiling. The generator hum was deafened by our amplifier pumping ambient house through twin speakers. I rolled around the air mattresses. A bald blue man in black glasses with a bright flash light looked distractedly for a balloon lost in the mass of fur coats, cans of Red Bull, burnt glow sticks, and sleeping bags. We all laughed and laughed and laughed.

I peered into her face, looking at the curve of her chin, wondering whether I had encountered her mouth before. My hand moved purposefully on its own, a silver pen sweeping the surface of a black canvas. Her eyes captivated by my intensity, wondering whether she should smile or recognize the artist, held by the two piercing, glowing orange horns on my head. The eyes on the black page swirled. "This is not a portrait. It is a mirror. It is a picture of you in the future, at some point hence."

I placed the copper wire contraption on his head. We were in the midst of a party on a field, crowds watching a woman spin a flaming double staff. He smiled, said that he had seen the massager before. "Shhh," I said, "Don't talk. Just feel and listen. Listen to the world around you, the music, the laughter, the swish of the fire dancers. I am stealing your soul through the top." He smiled, swayed, smiled some more, his curly dreads jumping. "This is not just nineteenth century reflexology. Due to Volta and Edison, we have electricity." I fluctuated the vibrations on the copper, the hum going straight to his brain. He almost collapsed and then cackled. I think it worked.

A group came by as we lingered catatonically on our couches. "Hey, this is our favorite place at PDF. You guys have your shit together. I spent many hours

here last night lying under the string. You have a different space, something that was lacking, chill music, the black light, the sealed dome." Our Boston compatriots had set up a theme camp: Bean camp. Their dome never made it off the ground. Come the second night, they relinquished. Later in the evening, we found a pedestal, a can of baked beans, and a simple sign "Bean Camp" in front of our dome.

I perched on the top struts, the sun beaming down, removing staples from the canvas cover that Dustin so painstakingly made on an industrial sewing machine. A guy not wearing much pulled up in a truck, got out. His long black hair almost covered his sun glasses. "Hey, how's it going?" "Slow, it's time to take it all down." "Hey, we want to invite you all to a party. We got a new warehouse space in Baltimore and we want you guys there. My name's Pete. What's your e-mail address?"

She moved back in forth doing the robot. Pink hair, a black cocktail dress covered in different sizes of googly eyes. I circled her jumping around. "Where did you come from?" she asked, "Are you always like this? You're so adorable." I laughed and laughed and laughed: "I'm only me." Her name is Spoon. I was among my people, no worries, just a lot of fun. I told her that I was wearing CDs the day before, a devil the next day. She laughed, "Oh, I was a pegasus yesterday."

A large projection screen hung next to the outdoor dance floor. The techno music blasted forth. The screen showed fractal patterns and the face of a Thai woman. In black silhouette, an Argentine flamenco dancer moved elegantly around and around and around behind the screen, her flowing skirt racing, arms every which way. Such style. I moved ten feet, just to the side of the screen. The thirty-eight year old Argentine flamenco dancer was actually a chubby girl of twelve in a pink tutu, but she had the moves. Her joy transformed her, twisting all night long.

He towered above us on a twin pair of what seemed to be four-foot stilts. He held on to a fifteen-foot pole for balance, but also so he could literally dance on his stilts. The show was only starting. He took his pole, thrust it into the embers, the end fiered forth. He swung the staff to the other end, lighting now both sections. The fifteen-foot pole twirled. He broke the flaming end to one stilt, lighting it and then the other. Everything burning he loped around the circle, staff jumping in the air. After minutes, he dropped the staff and picked up a firey ball of a dart on the end of twenty-foot cord. He whipped the dart above his head, sparks flying, wrapping it around one stilt and then the next, a comet-like arc of flames. I could see his back, the stars, a cord, a fiery ball arcing over his head down his back in one forceful push of elemental intensity. I couldn't move, think.

They were obviously a couple, the man with a Abe Lincoln-style black beard, a simple black brimmed hat on his head. He had a blue collared shirt, suspenders, black pants. She wore a blue blouse, white frock, a blue bonnet. The joy of looking Amish at a rave is that anything you do is particularly ironic. He grooved in a happy, Amish way. She looked demure. I loved both of them.

The night was young. I sat next to a couple, not dressed, in a kiddie pool. No water, though, just a mass of rose petals, thousands and thousands of them. We flung them in the air, sultry dark red, covered each other with petals and laughter. Where did they come from? With dawn, though, the petals got wet and soggy.

The stripper jumped on the pole, instructing me to walk around the pole, arc a leg, put my crooked knee on the pool, and let the twirl take me around. I couldn't get the move right, but the crowd clapped nonetheless. I climbed almost to the top, my energy so high, and slid down like a fireman. We poured whiskey then kahlua down the ice block to waiting mouths below at the bottom of the ice groove.

The fire dancers came out. One was dressed like a Spanish senorita in a black and red dress with undulating hem. She had a lit torch on the end of each finger. Her hands moved back and forth with the tempo. She closed both hands, struck the ten brands into the ground. The man with the double staff lit up, oil bursting everywhere. He flung the staff in the air; I could see the fuel three feet away from me fly into the crowd. The two kids, a cute couple, with poi crept closer, back to back, four balls of flame twisting around each other's bodies. Such concentration. She twisted the firey whip around her head, cracking the ground over and over again. Eventually she kneeled turning the flaming whip over her face. Skinny and blond, he looked like a fawn with little chains of two burning poi. He turned and turned, almost doing cartwheels the embers almost scraping his bare chest.

I bellied up to the bar. The large bored bartender asked what I wanted. "Gin and tonic." He moved some glasses around, got out some olives and a cocktail stick. Frank Sinatra was crooning. It was almost five in the morning. The bar was still crowded. "Here you go, enjoy."

Dustin had borrowed Josh's camera, same make as the one he had, so reassuring but not his own. The night got long, we got everywhere: fields, tent, dome, party. No camera though. Gone to the ether. Could be anywhere. Did it fall out of his pocket? Did he put it down. It wasn't gonna come back. Sucks to lose something, sucks worse when you lose someone else's something. Yet the next night, on the stereo appeared a different camera. Karma? We turned it on, peered through assembled photos, looked voyeuristically through the mirror of someone else's life, a trip to Disneyworld, selling a chair on Craigslist. The dome had to come down in the morning. The sun beat, we were beat, hardly functioning. She strolled down the path, purposefully. How did she find us? Why? She carried Dustin's camera. I jumped her, couldn't speak, picked her up. She was looking for a camera herself, the one we had. We inhabit a magical world.