deedley deedley don't

Whilst cleaning my glorious 160 square foot apartment just this morning, I unearthed a smallish, unlined notebook, slightly moisture warped and tinted with dirt. My notebook from the first folklife I worked 5 years ago! What luck, what a staggering find! I immediately stopped my dusting and neatening and thumbed thru it. Standing there in my flip flops and cleaning shorts, I tucked the dust rag into my back pocket and prepared for a short and satisfying jaunt thru ye olde memory street. Mostly what I found were pretty generic notes on canopy misplacements, missing fence fabric, and where and when to meet a particular vendor. Interesting! Almost as interesting was to notice the steady decline in legibility of my particular scrawl. As days and hours progressed, my notes to self become increasingly fragmented, dare I go so far as to say belligerent. Toward the end, where it looks as if I or someone within my close vicinity had actually mistaken the bound paper to be edible, there is a brief, barely legible timeline of my last days working. Since there is no way to summarize the events in an accurate manner, I will include them here for you in their full entirety. Dear readers, beware, the account which you are about to be privy to is as riveting as it is harrowing. They can only but hint at the deplorable shape to which I was reduced to by prolonged exposure to folk music and very very little sleep. Read on, if you dare.

daY 9

8am why am i hear?

11am why ar all these people her?

201pm i am

415pm still

556pm here

740pm why

909pm?

dy10

11:09am i listned to a banjo busker, and it made me cry. i love that bajno.

11:10am i hate that banjo plyer! i wanna hav sex wit banjo player!

11:14am and then smashed banjo against brick wall. hungry now.

11:18am just ate banjo player. . flossing teeth with banjo strings. . . need nap . .

5:16pm where am i? i stomcah hurt . .

7:21pm sp kdkfl ma ma skm diuiiiiiidiiiiiiidiiiiigiiiiireeeeeeddontttt!

Mercy! My brain must have somehow blocked those memories soon after, thereby allowing myself to subject myself to those same conditions every year since! I count myself lucky to be alive! . . that or I have somehow, over the years, reset my dials to accept the above as 'normal.' Or at the very least, 'just another festival.' See you at Bumbershoot?

siempre

am i white

i look white

i feel white

not always

my neighbor gave me athlete's foot. and other pedestrian bones of contention. . .

practically a month passes by and this is what i have to report? well. . . yes.

i am different now than i was in the past. how can i tell you ask? consider the following: i use to work events on the production crew which consisted of around 2+ straight weeks of work, ridiculously long hours, and lifting heavy awkward things. i survived with enough energy/drive/crazy to do it again. and again. and again. this year, howevers, i only worked 5 days of ze festival of folk music and i am just now, 3 days later, kinda coming to my rested, hurdy gurdy free senses. has my tolerance for bluegrass/folk/deedley dee music taken a sharp dive over the years? maybe. my appreciation for sleep and home time has most definitely steadily increased over those same number of years. file under 'positive life change.'

and while we are at it, file please the following grievance under 'tell me this is a temporary (read: curable) life change.' ok, so i don't know for sure if my amateur diagnostic is dead on or not, but i swear the skin on my toes were not peeling before i moved into this place. i share a bathroom with 4 other residents and god help me i swear i am the only one not raised in a barn, or whatever structure of origin where it is not just accepted but extolled to get the bath mat completely soaked after showering. the bath mat has come, slowly over the course of the past year of my residence here, to take on the appearance of a square, blue, low nap petri dish. this is, needless to say, gross. and what am i to do about this biological aberration? well, throwing it in the wash comes to mind first and foremost. but that would require wrestling my righteous sense of indignation to the grown and coughing up the monies for the $1.50 wash + $1.25 dry. a mighty match indeed. until the outcome of that battle is announced, i shall spend my time soaking my feet in a home made* concoction of approx 4 - 5 pH whilst sharpening my dagger eyes for the next time i espy those who share my general address.

on a side note, in an earlier email to friend, i fully typed the word 'dude' into the 'to' box. my friend's name did not come up. does my gmail not understand me when i speak in slangy reference to my buddy? me thinks gmail is due for another upgrade. . .

until then, best to you all.

*oh yeah, 'homemade,' according to the internet, equals either A) apple cider vinegar or B) urine. presumably human.