Diary 19
10.11.2021
I’ve been bailing on plans, taking long drives, lazing in lace slips, reading & writing, working like a dog, drinking too much coffee, pinching pennies and making playlists. I don’t have much to say right now, so here’s a soundtrack for this life I been leadin’.
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Ghost Memories, Gene McKown
Midnight, Red Foley
Milk and Honey, Jackson C. Frank
Ocean of Tears, Big Maybelle
Truckdriver, Scott H. Biram
Baby, Please Don’t Go, Ted Nugent
I’ve Lost My Baby, Fleetwood Mac
Dust My Broom, Fleetwood Mac
All Over Again, Johnny Cash
Methhead, Ian Noe
Hillbilly Wolf, Dave Dudley
Blue Light, Mazzy Star
I Got My Mojo Working, Joyce Harris & The Daylighters
Old Fashioned Morphine, Jolie Holland
Dink’s Song, Dave Van Ronk
Nights in White Satin, The Moody Blues
Blue Moon, Elvis Presley
Bluebirds Over the Mountains, Ersel Hickey
He’s Been A Shelter For Me, The Soul Stirrers
After Laughter, Charley Crockett
Jim Cain, Bill Callahan
—
10.13.2021
Home sweet. I flew back home tonight and surprised my little sister for her birthday tomorrow, which is my favorite kind of secret to keep. Kids make you feel real special, nearly famous; their giddy smiles and questions they hurl at you like baseballs in a batting cage. Over a porkchop sandwich and some beers I cheered my sister on while she did cartwheels by the kitchen table, responded to my brother narrating his game of Madden from the living room, and pet my dogs, happy as hell to be home.
10.14.2021
Waded through the creek singing Pete Seeger’s, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, chewing on wild onions.
My brother lead me through, eyes scanning the creek bed, quiet as can be in his curiosity. When my boots got stuck in the mire he pointed and said “we call that sinking sand,” though I instantly thought of quicksand and that scene from The Neverending Story. “Everyone knew that whoever let the sadness overtake him, would sink into the swamp…” Oh my bludgeoned, bleeding heart.
10.15.2021
Went for a run this morning at a local forest preserve. I stopped intermittently to wander off path, taken by fungi, a big oak tree, a field of prairie flowers and critters in the wood, all the while hoping and praying I’m not passing through some poison ivy. So far so good, but I did come home covered in burs.
10.16.2021
My grandma always has monarch butterflies in her yard, and as a little girl, I was convinced that she possessed some unknown magic that summoned them in abundance. Yesterday she brought that magic in a brown bag; almond shaped pods bursting with silky white fibers (some people call this ‘floss’) and brown seeds, which will eventually produce milkweed. The larvae of monarch butterflies solely eat milkweed leaves, which makes it critical to a Monarch’s lifecycle, so my grandma, my sister and I took turns spreading the seeds in my dad’s woods.
10.17.2021
Met up with old friends and made a couple new ones at a pub in the suburbs of Chicago. Even from inside, with some Jameson in my belly, the cold night air seeped through the windows and surged through the front door, and I was covered in goosebumps, chattering my teeth as I made conversation. Ironically it wasn’t until we all stepped outside that a quiet bliss washed over me, warmed me to my core, as I observed people interacting, cracking jokes with one another, laughing so fucking hard their beer bellies jiggled from under their jackets. There was an intimacy among them that I haven’t experienced in my own friendships for some time. And frankly they were speaking a language I understood, entertaining my sense of humor. I realized that as hard as I may try to assimilate to the culture in California, I’m a Midwest babe at heart; I just feel real understood when I visit home. We ended the night sitting around my friend Pat, playing the guitar like a maniac, and took turns pouring beer into his mouth. My damn people.
