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?

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.

inner thoughts on my outward appearance

the other day at work, one of the dancers approached me, i was alone stage left. 'hi,' she introduced herself, smiling, hello, i said, i'm ilvs, 'you're name is elvis? really? that's so cool,' and proceeded to hem and haw about. .. something. 'you look pretty cool, and i was wondering, well, how do i go about this?' i didn't quite get the i'm hitting on you vibe, so i kept listening, 'well, we are in seattle visiting for a few days,' maybe she's gonna ask me where the gay bar is? 'and well, i'm wondering if you know where we could get some friendly green herb.' (ok, not verbatim, but close) ah ha, pot. she's looking for pot. and they elected her to talk to me because i, out of all the 6 or so stage hands, look like the hook up. what? that is not how i want to be seen in the world, nor is it how i want to be seen. cool, yeah sure maybe. pot dealer? no. i wasn't even wearing patchouli. i laughed it off in the moment, 'uh, actually, i am the wrong person to ask, i wouldn't know where to get it. you're barking up the wrong tree.' i told her i would stealthily ask around but in all seriousness, i wouldn't even know where to begin to ask. so i didn't.
i mean, i guess maybe i have a negative impression of who it is that partakes, (lots of great people smoke pot (i love bob marley, he is exempt)), or rather it's just not part of my world, i can think of maybe one person i hang out with that does. and i have no interest in it. i value marijuana for it's medicinal properties, but for it's fun times? not so much. also why you won't find me downing entire bottles of rubitussin for kicks. i have more personally fulfilling things to do with my time.
then, the next day, my coworker relayed to me that, while talking to a renter in my absence, trying to figure out if i was who they both knew, he, renter, described me as having 80's rocker hair. and that sealed it, she then knew for sure that i was the person in question. hmmmm. 80's rocker. . . pot dealer. . . not sure what to think of this.

on a side note, i have decided to partake in the 'write a novel in november' quest. foolish? maybe. difficult? yes in fact. but by the end of the month, i shall have a 50,000ish word rough draft of what is to be novel #1 of n# of novels. this, unfortunately, coincides with me running out of already written haiku to post. as in, in order to keep posting to reach my goal of 575, i must begin actively writing new ones. i have enlisted the help of 'the haiku handbook' in order to motivate me. all this to say that i am writing a shit ton right now. so, if you're gonna judge me, hopefully with detached observation and an open heart, probs my writing is a better insight, not my drugs and rock n' roll exterior.

sweet jesus. jesi? plural?

Get this: 2 or 3 weeks ago, I run more than half a marathon cold wearing these well worn in (well, more like worn well often for short periods of time, no marathons, half or otherwise) sneaks and I come out the other end relatively unscathed.

Last week, I go for a 30 hour jo- - oops I meant 30 minute/half hour jog in nike sneaks I hardly wear cuz they are not as comfy (and not just because of their bright non reflective therefore wholly unnecessary pink accents) and it feels like I broke something in my right foot. I destinctly remember feeling something shift somewhat uncomfortably that last time out but passed it off as regular running kinks. Not so! I limped around for like a week, unable to wear my clogs, single footing a bunch of yoga poses until I got to the point where I'm like, this is getting old.

The last time I had ouchie foot bone probs was when I wore around for most of a day these cool looking old blue sneaks. Awesome in the aesthetic department, not so much in the support department. My feet ached like I pulled something/stoned them and the only thing I did that made them feel better was to stop wearing them and walk some in my regular shoes. The pain ceased over the course of a short few days. So then I thought, That's it! I'll just run in my good ole shoes and my feet will return to their normal state of awesomeness. Like resetting a bone that broke and healed improper. The only glazed over part of the equation is the part where you put a cast back on the broken bits and lay off it while the newly in place parts settle down ie heal.

The running on a bad foot after not for a week hurt, I won't lie. But not terribly. In a, this is better than it was, kinda way. And continues to do so, several days after aforementioned (8 minute) outing. But it hurts in a different way. More of a sore bruise than holy crap, the bones in my foot are separating like an unlucky astronaut floating away untethered from the mother ship circa 2001. I am confident my country/artsy doctor remedy did the trick . . . – I'm sorry I'm at work and got really distracted by 2 Jesus' dancing with 2 nuns to the live hip hop show I'm running sound for. I heart my job. Anyways, Happy Halloween.

does it kill the funny? explaining it?

last weekend, on my way out the door to work (folklife2010), I tried to lock my apartment with my festival key. ha! wait'll I tell my coworkers, i chuckle to myself. fast forward a few hours, we, me my coworker, are sitting around in our makeshift break room/hide out and I relay the morning's hilarity. he blurts out his reply, book-ended by laughter: 'I did the same thing! and then,' he adds, 'I tried to radio it in to tell everyone.' our shared laughter was cut short by a radio call of someone needing a key assist in the next room. ah, festivals. . .

for reals, the above incident is in fact ridiculously funny when you work 12+hour days back to back to back to back with a radio strapped to your shoulder, squawking in your ear like an orphaned parrot. trust me words on it.

if it takes more than 5 minutes to think of a title, it's probs time to go to sleep

I have been absurdly derelict in my blogging.
and all I have to show for it is this:

the other morning, while covering a shift for my outs of town partner, I vacuumed up off the bar balcony floor, a MENTOS. my initial surprise at the ferocity of the vacuum to choke down a sizable piece of candy quickly gave way to elemental awe as the fresh smell of warm mint wafted up towards my still sleepy face. this made the chore quite pleasant for a few minutes. until the point at which I vacuumed up some 12 hours ago delectable now stale french fries.