The Perks

My goodness. An e-mail from Skip and he says to send him your snail-mail address and he'll send you the book, he's wxf8424@louisiana.edu on my list. Do it. Might as well read the best. I finished it today, and started rereading it. Working on the Wrack Show tomorrow, at least some serious talk and hauling the metal for the shed roof, also metal for back porch roof, force my own hand, so to speak. First orange, a sumac frond. Lovely but scary. Need to walk the driveway tomorrow morning and cut away some brush, using D's truck to haul metal and he'll bitch about the metal scratching tunnel the driveway has become. Those folk that walked up the other day were sure the place was abandoned, -it is-, I said, -I live in an abandoned house-. Thinking about voices. Got up to pee at 3 and flipped on PBS, as I often do, when I know I can't get right back to sleep; often strange things on the air then, and it was a documentary about STAX Records, got to listen to a little Otis Reading and Skip mentions John Lee Hooker's voice, so I go down stairs and listen to a little John Lee, lord have mercy, maybe the great voice of all time, and remember that Miles Davis once said of James Taylor he sounded like a blind black man. John Lee sounds like black velvet, smoke and whiskey. He's often just a little ahead or a little behind the beat, makes it real, and when he's playing "Black Snake", there isn't much doubt what he's talking about. His voice is hot, sexy, effortless. In a woman's voice it's always a contralto for me, that carries that load of promised sex, and precise pronunciation. John Lee does it with a low baritone, some mumbles, and just the right tone. Boys and girls are different. It took a long time for me to learn that. My life as a wrack line, a sequence of failures, the two mile trough the "Bismark" carved when it was sliding to it's final resting place, let's face it, a hole in the ground. Could be a gopher. I could blame it on someone else, or I could, as I do, just accept responsibility, my fuck-up, I'll fix it, don't bother yourself. Aloneness is the issue, would you rather be bothered by someone else, or be alone? Most people would rather be in company, who could blame them, another warm body, as good as McCarthy's can of peaches in "The Road". I salivated, but I would rather be alone. I like being alone, I can project things, imagine what might be said, sometimes I almost dance, the space is completely open. Defining space is an option. What he said. What you said. I have no idea.