easy monday, fine and dandy

Deep sleeping and strange dreaming. We are driving together, you the passenger like you always were, me swerving and having trouble, like I always do when I am driving while asleep. I start to pull over, you ask me why and I try to explain that my vision has suddenly become the size of a playing card, held an arm's length away. Like looking at a tiny screen from a distance, rectangular tunnel vision and trying to navigate a windy road. Later, in your big country house we are sitting around with our elbows up on tables, propping up our chins. I am showing you the beeswax beards that I have made for us, "here, you put the candles in these little holes and the whole thing will get warm and malleable and that's when you plaster it onto your face..." Later on, hobbling through sunny streets with showerless wild hair and filthy sunglasses. The bar is closed to the earlycomers and so we find ourselves inside a dive called Bistro de Paris, drinking gigantic five dollar mugs of nameless beer and eavesdropping on the other seven patrons. The men's bathroom door has a window and so I can see the back of every man peeing, see which ones go into the stall or wash their hands. The gambling corner lit up by digital slot machines, where that man is spending all kinds of money, swaying in to press the button so rhythmically like a dance, hoping for five cherries in a row. It aches to see those crispy fives get devoured when we have a loaned $40 to our names, between us. Thinking of Joni, thinking "hey, honey, you got lots of cash, bring us round a bottle and we'll have some laughs" but nope that gamblin' man's just doing his thing and we still have 29 dollars to blow so I guess that's that. Then back across the road to the matinee show of those fine country singer friends. A few more pints and now it's only eveningtime just beginning, can't be the end but we are flat out of money. But we don't want to see the end! So nevermind the end, we are coming over for your specialty rice and spinach! Depanneur deliberations and one big bottle of beer with our last nickels and dimes, but it turns out that you don't even drink and soon enough we have switched to tea (verbena and sage, steeped just right). Taking in your beauty of a voice with your haunting songs, and singing Lhasa and harmonizing and cutting up the garlic and onions like a family and enjoying that meal and sing, sing us some Leonard Cohen, but oh no! You get a phone call from down the hall to keep it down and we laugh our heads off at that and move into the room for a few more songs, marvelling at the words we remember and our voices come together and my, how a good sing song is sometimes all I ever need. When the end has come I take the steps to hobble home and it's lovely to be out when the city is so dark and quiet and empty. I am walking the way I want to, and ignoring the leering cabdrivers and kicking a can and listening to Mama Wolf and home to bed, to bed to sleep. In the morning the weather is trying so hard to be springtime and it's lovely to sit and to listen to songs and to stand up straight with my guitar. Belting out these country songs with real lungfulls of air and real room to breathe and toughened fingertips and increasing confidence, at least in the presence of my one cat audience. Afternoon has found it's way here with that same ease that a regular Monday tends to. Minty tea and tuning out the strangers, but never really. Reminiscing about all kinds of funny moments and feeling lucky in life lately because I get to feel so free and to laugh so constantly and know nothing about the future and that's dandy and fine.