kerouac says

good lord.

i wrote at the copenhagen airport, but my time ran out before i could post it. coming soon.

right now, the body hurts. could be because we're sleeping on the floor in a bay window on something that is, i think, called a 'smutch.' which is a cool word and all, but it's a cool word for sleeping on the *floor.*

making do in someone else's home--and all cultural differences properly respected, the house is just godawful dirty, just . . . oh, dirtydirtydirty--sometimese feels so isolating . . . so it's a godsend to have the monkey along. and today on my tired legs, when we got lost and i fixed it with coffee and croissants, i thought like i always do about how this partnered life is kicking the ass of the one i used to have. not that it wasn't fun to be alone, but. oh, this.

anyhow. tech was a mess. turns out the show will be accompanied not by the jazzy combo that powered the play's first production, nor the grand piano we rehearsed with at home. no, it's somewhat euphemistically called an 'electronic piano.' read, 'casio keyboard.' i feel like i'm lipsynching at a junior high talent show.

that is, a junior high talent show in edinburgh. and the cast could not be more fun. i think one is coming over to the dark side comprised of me and the monkey--you know, the ones who think the show is stinky? i can tell because she started mumbling about mutiny (and i thought she said 'booty,' not 'mutiny,' and now 'BOOTY!' is the war-cry of the disaffected).

so, i'm in scotland. neener, world.

in for four, out for eight.

passport is in the thing we keep renaming. appropriate bags are in one car. locked vessel is in port. check is in hand. hair is still rooted. love still holds.

i'm blowing this pop stand, amerika. see you in a while.

(news from the UK forthcoming. out.)

i forgive you.

i'm hoping to find some magic shoes. with special upwards forces beaming out of the arch supports, and night vision confidence bows on the sides and supacool laces that will swaddle my parts together as i run fleetly and headstrong into the next thing.

also, they need to cost about five dollars. that's where i'm at.

la. i say.

we're in the car and the old joke is told for the seventh time and we fall apart laughing. it's the definition of summer.

sometimes the big love makes the world smaller. i can tell because it's happening to me the way i watched, dismayed, as it happened to other girls: i don't care, so much, anymore. just so long as i've got the one buddy. when he's around, enough of the world is right.

things i am worried about:

if the hudson china breaks. i will not be able to replace it. what will i do?

the monkey uses too much bubble wrap. even to wrap up the hudson china which i have been kvetching about for a month. what will i do?

he wants to buy a whole new pack of toilet paper when we'll only be here five more days. what will i do?

the production is an awful dog. i'm travelling overseas to promote a play i can't in good conscience recommend to popeye the sailor man. what will i do?

like m&a said, i suppose it all starts with getting on the right plane with the right passport, and then everything else just kind of happens.

i wonder if it's all set-up so that you never have time to leave the way you meant to. maybe if i had the long, drawn-out ceremony i imagine, i'd never go, and stressed out and crazy is the only way to will yourself out of the womb.

could be.

it isn't quite how i pictured. the show is overblown and underdone and not nearly . . . well, good. and my free time evaporated into a cloud of stressymist. but the monkey reminded me this morning--and i had actually forgotten: it's all because i'm moving away to the big city. that's what it's for. and though there are miles to go before i sleep, i'm damned excited.

what is it about the mojitos? a year ago, the only reason i knew it was a drink was that my roommate had a hand-lettered recipe hanging on the wall, and now it's the new diet pepsi.

when i was in high school, i would occasionally freak out about how much i had to do. invariably, my mother would talk me down and make me some tea and a grilled cheese sandwich.

it is now the monkey's job, and if he chooses to do it with magic tricks and toe-knuckle cracking, who am i to deny him?

it was in an alder grove, and the bugs were blimps. ball was played into the night, and the monkey became the New Guy, and was loved, and loved the game, and loved me. i spent the weekend locked into canoodle when i wasn't taking pictures, and my bug bites are now taking over manhattan. my parents hailed him like a medium-friend in a strange land and we all laughed. the people i don't see anymore were back, and it was so much warm friendship and so little sleep that now i feel like i was on Past Planet for a weekend, and then had to come home.

i miss them.

but i have a secret in my pocket. shhhhh:


the heart is an open lily.

we're off to a wedding, and i'm glad, because i like nothing the way i like a wedding. it's usually a very good day when people get married.

the bridal shower was full of people i suddenly realized in the shower this morning weren't going to be around me anymore, after the move. i mean, duh, but . . . somehow what'd been creeping me was thinking of the oddball folks i like so much and never see, not the ones i lean on all the time and who will probably gradually become the ones i don't hear from and we'll all have our separate lives and be happy, but . . .

i just don't want to get any older. everything is fine. and when things aren't fine, there's time visible in the distance for them to get fine. if that's not true at forty six, i don't really know what i'm gonna do.

oh, holy jeez.

here's it: if i leave, i promise i'll come back.


oh, the end of anything is like mustard right in the eyeball. i swear.

it's good. it's goooooood.

well, first a tooth exploded. the night before, which lead to the singular worst night's sleep i've ever encountered. there was also a lot of disturbing disturbances, not fighting, but clouds of not-right ions. on the road, tooth fixed, we had a cooler issue, and then lack of phones at the state patrol.

at the first campsite, we were situated on the grounds of the restrooms. so we changed to the first site off the parking lot. monkey woke up thinking he'd observed a thunderstorm when really it was jake brakes and headlamps. a feral kitten visited us, too. oh, cute.

but laughing. lots of laughing.

then SF, and funny ground underneath me and hunger grumpies upon arrival and smelling bad . . . and then friends, which was nice--and she is so nice, the one i got to meet--but something was off, something didn't seem right until late on the day we left. sigh. but we did leave, and moved at a crawl through santa rosa into the only available tent site at salt point, which was next to the Asshole family. their disco began at one a.m., but the fun had only just started.

awake after a wakeful night of incline sleeping, there was a lot of laughter.

then we discovered the raccoons. the motherfuckers found a cracked window and thew a cotillion inside my car. also some gang warfare (i mean, when there's an entire loaf of cracked wheat bread and a roll of Hit Biscuits on the line, who wouldn't get snarly).

then the radio stopped working. for the rest of the hundred zillion mile cartrip.

but we laughed, we laughed when the mist came down so close we might as well have been driving in a parking garage instead of the pacific coast, we laughed when his ears exploded and when the seats became damper than we were and the car shuddered and moaned and i got a parking ticket and the radio still didn't work and car sickness settled in like a maiden aunt. i don't think i've had that much fun in hell my entire life.

some people you can just do anything with.