beautiful, funny, sad & true

This weekend was full of gigs and parties and recording, so all I wanted to do today was drink water and do healthy, relaxing things.  I walked over to check out the new Irvington Farmers’ Market, which just started a couple of weeks ago, and is small but really great.  I bought some chicken tacos and a boysenberry soda, and sat in a chair listening to a quartet of musicians play while I ate.  I walked home and one of my friends called to tell me that he’d gone to the Rose Garden this morning (the actual rose garden, in Washington Park, not the stadium), and that sounded like the perfect thing to me too.  I grabbed my camera, jumped in the car, and headed across town.

As luck would have it, I happened to be there at the perfect time.  After I’d been there about fifteen minutes or so, I heard some sort of tribal drumming from the opposite end of the Garden.  Since the Japanese Garden is right near there, I thought maybe Portland Taiko was giving a performance, although the music didn’t sound Japanese at all.  I curtailed my rose activities and went over to investigate.

Coming down the steps were about thirty people in long white and green robes, singing, chanting, clapping and dancing to the rhythms of two large hand drums.  They had arrived in a white Hummer stretch limousine, and everyone in the garden was enthralled by them.  A few of us were standing around watching, since it seemed to be both public and private, if you see what I mean, so it took a while for us rubberneck photographers to see how close we could get without being intrusive.

Finally the groom and bride appeared, and it became obvious that the ceremony was a wedding.  The group was clearly African, and I thought I recognized the language as being Ethiopian.  Two women came to stand near me, and we chatted a bit about how beautiful it all was, and how lucky we felt to be there.

The group started in the main entrance to the garden, and slowly made their way to a handful of other locations.  The bride and groom were often separated from the party, talking privately with the man who appeared to be the equivalent of the celebrant.  When they took a turn and came toward me, in the direction of the steps, I saw that I was in the perfect position for some interesting photos.  The wedding photographer walked next to me, and I said to him, “Can I ask where you’re from?  Are you guys Ethiopian?”  He said yes, they were, and he gave me a I-can’t-believe-you-actually-know-about-Ethiopia smile.

I didn’t realize until they came closer just how exquisite and ornate their clothes were.  Look at all the little details and layers.  They must have been roasting under all that.  It was about eighty degrees today.

I was even lucky enough to capture the two of them in one of the rare moments when they weren’t completely surrounded by people, and had a moment to themselves.  It was a nice moment.  After this shot, I put down my camera and congratulated them as they walked by, and was rewarded with radiant smiles from both of them.

They led the wedding party down the steps, and by this time there was quite a crowd of people gathered around to watch, and to take pictures and videos, so I didn’t have to be stealthy anymore.  I saw an opportunity to get in front of the group as they came down the steps, and I took it.

In the back left of the pictures below, you can clearly see that the couple are off on their own, while the group is carrying on with the singing and chanting.  Also, it’s a bit hard to tell from these pictures, but the teal color of the womens’ dresses was absolutely stunning in the sun.  There was a multitude of hues of greens and blues, and the women shimmered as they walked and danced.

At this point I decided to take a little video, because even the best pictures can’t convey the movement and volume of what was happening.  Like i said, every single other person in the busy garden was enthralled by this group.

You can see in the video that the bride and groom came around the back of the frame, and slowly led the party to the next location, and that’s when I decided to leave them.  I figured that I’d bothered them enough, and I was very excited to come home and see how the pictures came out.  That’s when I noticed that I’d lost the extra battery for my camera.  I retraced my steps as best I could, but the garden is like a maze, so I never did find the battery.   Maybe if you find it you could let me know?  Thanks.  It’s a Canon, about an inch across, and it looks like this.

Anyway.  That was the only small downside to this otherwise wonderful day.  I feel very lucky to have been where I was, and to be able to witness such a beautiful and captivating event.

Oh yeah. . .I would be remiss not to add the picture of the stretch Hummer, which was parked right behind my car.  I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been to navigate that monstrosity through the narrow, winding roads of Washington Park.

This is quite simply the cheesiest and weirdest thing I’ve seen in a long time.   It’s a cartoon called “The Little Prince, Somewhere in Space.”

Seems like this might be one of those cartoons that’s shown on Christian TV channels.  It has the same kind of sickly sweet tone that those do. . .except for the Rose character, who [somewhat shockingly] isn’t wearing a shirt.

I came across a few other similarly weird old Little Prince videos, that I’m sure will be equally ridiculous and cloying, but for some inexplicable reason, I can’t wait to watch them all.

This is my all-time favorite dream, which I had when I was eighteen years old.  I found it written out on an old floppy disk, along with my other two favorite dreams, George Harrison and The Organ Man.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy all three of them.

* * * * *

It was a beautiful spring day, and I was sitting on my old Honda motorcycle outside a small outdoor shopping center in Yakima with a railroad theme.  It was one of the few historical landmarks in town, and there was a great little ice cream shop there, with a cute server girl who was a friend of mine.

I was holding a bag of Hydrox cookies in a plastic grocery bag that was dangling from my handlebars.  It’s amazing what one can accomplish when one has no other options.  I’ve held many a bag of groceries from the handlebars of that motorcycle, let me tell you.  As I was looking left and right, scanning traffic to make a turn from the parking lot onto Yakima Avenue, two early teenage kids ran by and attempted to snatch my bag, but since the handles of the bag were wrapped around the handlebars, they did not succeed.  I was not amused.  “I’d better hide these,” I resolved to myself, tucking the bag inside my brown leather jacket and zipping it up all the way.

I revved the engine a bit and looked to my left at the oncoming traffic, where I saw a small crowd of maybe ten or fifteen people milling around on the sidewalk in front of the Oriental Garden restaurant about a block away.  They appeared to be looking for someone.  A middle-aged guy turned and looked directly at me for an unnerving second, then pointed me out and yelled to his cohorts, “There he is!”  They all turned and started to run in my direction.  “Let’s get him!” someone shouted.  Not being one to suffer hostile mobs gladly, I revved up the motorcycle and turned right onto Yakima Avenue, away from the crowd. Looking across the street, I saw the two kids running in the same direction I was going, and one of them had a bag of Oreo cookies in his hand, which was startlingly similar to my own bag of Hydrox. “Ah,” I realized, in a flash of inspiration.  “They must think I’m those kids.”

Suddenly the motorcycle became extremely sluggish.  When I turned the throttle, the engine revved slightly but dipped immediately afterwards.  It eventually came to a stop just short of where the kids were running, and I had to resort to the time-honored ambulatory means of escape.  The kids saw me approaching and, thinking I was chasing them, took off running even faster.  I ran across the street to the far side of Yakima Avenue.

Glancing over my shoulder to where the crowd had been only seconds before, I noticed that they were now crossing the street toward me.  I tried to run but was unable to.  I tried to walk fast, but was pathetically unable to manage that either.   Panicked now, with the crowd coming ever closer, I tried to coax my leaden legs to get me away, but it was to no avail.  The menacing mob closed in around me.  They pushed me to the ground and, despite my protestations, poked and prodded me from all sides, trying to unzip my jacket and remove my precious cargo. . .the Hydrox cookies.

Lying on my back, with the crowd of people on top of me, digging their fingers into my jacket, I finally relented, salvaging the vestiges of my dignity in the only way I could.  I fought off the offending hands with one hand, and unzipped my jacket with the other, slowly revealing the telltale blue and yellow bag.  I shouted at the crowd incredulously, desperately, gesturing frantically at the label on the bag with my free hand.  “They’re only Hydrox!  They’re only Hydrox!”

This is one of my Top Three, All-Time Favorite Dreams, along with Hydrox and The Organ Man.  I had it many years ago, not long after George Harrison died, and I just found it written out on a floppy disk in a box, and had to share it here.  You’ll like it, and you’ll like the other two as well.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago, I mailed off a tape of myself playing a George Harrison song.  It was my own arrangement of “Taxman”, which morphed into “Piggies”, then back into “Taxman,” with a quote of the “Something” guitar lick at the end.  Very well done, I thought.  I had seen an ad in the back of one of those musician magazines saying they were looking for versions of George Harrison songs to put on a memorial CD, since George had just died a week or two before.  The ad in the back of the magazine promised that I could win some prize.

A couple of weeks later, I got a call from a Russian guy (I’ll call him the Man, for reasons that will soon become obvious) who was a judge in the magazine’s contest.  He spoke in thickly accented but grammatically perfect English.  He said he had heard my tape, and that he liked my blending of the songs.  I thanked him, and he asked if we could meet sometime soon.  I agreed, and a week or so later we met in a little café, a converted house with canary yellow walls and hunter green wall-to-wall carpeting.  We walked through to the tiny back room, which was dimly lit by what appeared to be candlelight, although I saw no candles.  He appeared to be in his early to mid-forties, with salt-and-pepper hair parted on one side.  I asked his name, and he replied, “I can’t tell you that.”  I was puzzled.  He then pulled out a small pile of papers, one of which was the opened, emptied envelope—my envelope—in which I had mailed my George Harrison tape.  He got it, I thought.  People actually DO get these things.  He rifled through the stack, freeing a white postcard with red block-style letters that proclaimed boldly, “THIS IS NOT ILLEGAL”, and handed it to me.   The other side was blank.  It appeared to be a regular postcard.   He said nothing.

What does this have to do with George Harrison? the Genius behind all of my great interior monologues asked himself.

Suddenly, I remembered a spam e-mail message with the ‘This is not illegal’ heading that I had seen a thousand times before, but had always deleted.  Wishing that I’d read it at least once, I recognized this meeting for what it was.  This Man just used the tapes as a ruse to meet people and lure them into whatever scam he had going.  I decided to get as much information as I could about this guy.

He seemed to sense my apprehension, but proceeded to explain the next part of the process to me anyway.  He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a cheap-looking Russian Walkman, which he handed to me.  It was still in its plastic retail packaging, complete with price tag, which valued this pathetic item at twenty-nine ninety-five.  “You buy this now, keep it for three days. . .”   He trailed off inexplicably.  And then what, I thought, mail it back to you?  What a stupid plan. A silent moment or two passed between us.  I looked at the cheap package in my hand, set it back on the table, and then looked at my opened and emptied envelope sitting on the nearby table.

“Why can’t I know your name?”  I asked him.  He ignored the question and started to repack his briefcase.  I thanked him, shook his hand and got up to leave.  As I walked from the dark back room into the restaurant, it seemed to take an inordinately long amount of time.  I looked at the yellow walls, the dark green carpet, and the people in the cafe.  In the time since the Man and I had arrived, the empty restaurant had become completely full of people who seemed to be waiting for their chance to talk to the Man.  Every one of the two- or four-seat tables was filled with a very strange subset of humanity.  Each couple (for it appeared that they were all young families) had the look of the Lower Class about them.  With precious few exceptions, their hair was unwashed and greasy, and they had that particular, inimitable smell. Some were wearing dirty old flannel shirts that didn’t match their pants very well, and some were dressed up for the occasion, wearing what appeared to be hand-me-down polyester suits from the mid-1970’s.  It was as if this group of people had both accepted their lot in life and were actively trying to improve it at the same time, albeit in a strange and desperate way, a bit like an Amway convention in Purgatory.  A man with metal-framed glasses and an enormous mole on his forehead glanced in my direction as I left, but I kept moving and finally escaped the place’s pull.

I looked around and wondered which of my two cars I had driven.  As it turned out, I had driven my ancient copper-colored Celica coupe, and it was sitting near the curb.  As I walked toward it, the thought occurred to me that I should get the license plate number of the Man’s car, a very expensive-looking black Saab hatchback.  It was still parked around the corner, behind the restaurant.  There was a recycling box nearby, so I grabbed two empty plastic orange juice bottles that had been floating around in the Celica’s passenger seat for a couple of weeks, a pen, and a small piece of paper from the glove compartment.  I carried the bottles, but stuffed the pen and paper into my pocket.  I closed the door of the Celica and walked across the lawn toward the Man and the Saab.  The driver’s door was open, and the Man was standing behind the car with the hatch open, loading a small cardboard box of something I couldn’t quite make out.  He must have come out the back door of the restaurant, I thought, in order for him to be here already.  He saw me but made no attempt at conversation, just looked away again and continued whatever he was doing with the package.

There was another Russian guy, slightly younger than the Man, who appeared to be the Man’s friend.   He was standing between us on the lawn next to the driveway, rigging up a device to monitor telephone conversations.  My interior Genius said to himself, What is it with these guys?  They must really be professionals.

The Friend was connecting a large black wire that ran across the lawn from a pole across the street on which I was parked to his own box, which was at the edge of the restaurant’s driveway.  The wire was hanging about a foot off the ground, obstructing the lawn, so I said to the Friend, “Can I get through?  I just want to throw away my recycling.”   I had to get to the Man’s car.  This was becoming too strange.  Someone had to be told about this whole business.  The Friend pointed toward the street and said, in a similarly thick accent, “Go around that way.  I’ll lift the wire.  It’s too low here.”  He pulled the wire taut, slack, and taut again, raising it about three feet above the ground, to show me his intention.   He held it in place, and I walked in the direction he had pointed, ducking down to make it under the wire.  Just as I was underneath it, he let it go slack, and I felt it drape across my back.  It had a mild electric charge of some sort.  I fell to the ground in panic.  The first Man had joined his Friend and lowered another wire, which also fell down on me.  I felt myself go numb, but not too numb, and thought that maybe if I just didn’t move, they would raise the wires and walk over, in which case I could get up and run.  I forced myself to stay in that prostrate position.  I heard them mumbling to each other quietly, wondering about the extent of the damage to me, and what they should do about it.  They started to walk toward me, but the wire stayed on my back.

I was worried now.  I had gone very numb all over, and could no longer move.  There would be no one to tell the authorities what I had seen.  These men would get away with whatever bizarre scheme they were planning.  The George Harrison song contest was a ruse!  The Walkman sale was a ruse!  It was a ruse within a ruse!  Who knew how big this thing could be!  I had to get up, but I didn’t have the energy.   They were closing in now.

As I awoke, in the same position I had been lying in the street in my dream, paralyzed with what I thought was electricity but turned out to be simple fear, I realized that I was OK.  I took a deep breath and started to relax, when my answering machine suddenly clicked on.  The message started recording, and it sounded like a cell phone connection that was very noisy and full of static.  I remembered the phone-monitoring device the men had been assembling in my dream.  I was expecting a Russian-accented voice, but no one spoke.  They’re onto me, I thought.  They know. . .

This is one of my three All-Time Favorite Dreams, along with Hydrox (which is my All-Time Favorite) and George Harrison.  I this dream when I was about twenty years old, and I just found it and the other two written out on a floppy disk in a box.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, and the other two as well.

* * * * *

I was leaving my parents’ house one day, after visiting them, and it was time to go back to the crappy apartment I was living in at the time.  Remind me to tell you sometime about the guy who lived upstairs from us, who had horse sex with his unattractive girlfriend while my roommate and I, the captive audience in the apartment below, listened with a mixture of glee, shame and envy, because while the guy and his girlfriend were both completely unattractive, at least he was having sex, which is much more than you could say for us at the time.  Although, to tell you the truth, I would much rather listen to that than the cute female neighbor next door to us, whose bed (on the other side of my bedroom wall) would bang against the wall when she had sex with her boyfriend.  One particularly miserable night when the guy upstairs was doing his equine thing, and the girl next door was doing her banging thing, my roommate and I just had to leave.  I went in and told him, “Man, we can NOT sit here and be surrounded by this crap.  Let’s get outta here.”

Why did I bring that up?

Oh yeah, the apartment.  What a piece of crap.

OH YEAH, my parents’ house.  I was leaving.  I walked out the front door, down the sidewalk, past the garage, and into the driveway.  This time, however, was not like any other time, before or since.   At the end of the driveway, almost to the house, was a white cup and saucer.  It was about three feet high, and it was full of a strange, soupy substance.  From a distance, the substance looked like a brownish red soup, but upon closer inspection, it turned out to be full of individual body parts.  There were livers, hearts, and organs of every kind mixed up in there, along with bones and all manner of other nastiness.

I saw the soup and thought it was just about the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen in my life.  I turned to walk past the cup and saucer to where my car was parked, when I suddenly heard this laugh.  It was a high-pitched laugh similar to that of Salacious Crumb, Jabba the Hutt’s sidekick from The Empire Strikes Back. But that’s not the weirdest thing.   The weirdest thing was that when I turned around, that’s who was sitting in the soup.  Salacious Crumb.  In the soup.  Laughing at me.  Like you probably are.

Here’s where the story gets really weird.

When I turned and saw Salacious sitting in the soup, I really wanted to show this to my parents, who were in the house.  I decided to open the garage door and go in that way.  As I was doing that, I heard this sloshing sound coming from inside the cup, and from the soup itself.  From the body parts in the soup, this. . .man suddenly appeared.  He was made up of the body parts, which, since he had no skin, were all completely visible inside him.  He just had the merest hint of a skeleton to hold all the pieces together.  Oh yeah, and he was wearing a black top hat.

Salacious let out this huge laugh, you know, the famous cackle from the movie, when he saw that I had seen the Organ Man rising from the soup.  For some reason, though, I wasn’t scared.  In fact, I found it all hysterically funny.  I knew it should be really nasty, but I just couldn’t stop laughing.  This really angered the guy in the soup, by the way.  He started to pull organs out of the soup to throw at me.  Salacious just sat there and cackled.  I was laughing so hard I could barely keep myself vertical, but when the Organ Man stood up and started to climb out of the saucer to come after me, I wasn’t stupid enough to stand there.  I turned and ran through the garage, with organs sailing past me and landing on the cement floor, which made a squishy sound, and hitting the wall next to the door to the house, which made a wooden squishy sound.  It was hilarious and terrifying at the same time.  I opened the door, jumped up the stairs into the house, and slammed the door shut behind me.  I heard a couple of organs splat against the other side of the door, and I chuckled to myself until I heard a thump which was the Organ Man banging on the door, trying to get in.  He opened the door, and I pushed against it as hard as I could to keep it shut, but he was much stronger than you would think a skeleton made of soupy organs would be.

He pushed the door open, and I sprinted up the hall to what used to be my bedroom, first door on the right.  The Organ Man was walking slowly down the hall, and by now he was becoming irate because I’d been laughing at him so much.   Luckily he couldn’t run very fast, so I went into my old room and slammed the door shut, locking it behind me.  That in itself is strange, because my bedroom door never had a lock, which once became fodder for a huge and somewhat ridiculous (in my opinion) argument between my stepdad and me, but that’s a sad story for another day.

The Organ Man came running, in his strange way, up the hall toward my room.  I had my back to the door, panting both from my sprint and from fear, when suddenly there came a mild-mannered knock from the other side of the door.  I thought to myself, Should I let him in? He gently knocked again, and again I wondered. Should I let him in?

I didn’t open the door.  I just hung out in my room for a while until the Organ Man went away.