Fetch Ringo (Dog Gone)

This is an unexpected continuation of my most recent entry. Ringo has disappeared. No, wrong word. He just aint here anymore. No splatter remains in the street. But after a day of aggressive Zoey chasing and humping, during which he really pissed me (and Oscar) off, hurt his right front leg somehow, was pulled repeatedly off the bitch, put in isolation briefly....and on and on til about 1 AM....I got Zoey back to mama this morning. Ringo chased the car all the way to the cemetary. When I returned after a long walk around Town Lake and a good Mexican lunch (Maudie's), he was gone.

Some kind soul picked the limping dog up and brought it home, it seems. Maybe. Humane society didn't get him.
I cruised Whispering Hollow after dark looking. Got lost. Don't even know my own neighborhood. I think i need to get out of here soon. The 3 remaining dogs are freaked. As am I. Or I'm projecting. Projecting that there's a good chance we'll get him back. The crazy little thing. And some chance we won't.
And the possible loss is a bit overwhelming. He's a gentle gentle soul who has lived with me for 5 years. Slept with me almost all the nights for five years. Whined a bit. Ate a bit. Yer basic dog. Dog gone.

Seems like a nail in some coffin. Not mine. Maybe the coffin of my residence in Buda. I called the realtor today at Goodwin, who has made a specialty of our road. Fuggit. I can't really record music here anymore. The noise level is, well, fully suburban, with added spice from our nearby industrial operations, cement plant, gravel pits, and construction.
A big world. A little dog. Sad. And lonely.
I think the other dogs wonder who goes next. I know I do. Wonder.

The road to Hell is said to be paved with good intentions. Hey, at least it's paved! I'm sorry I told Ringo F. You last night. He was destroying my newly made bed. See, I got better at it. He got worse. I want to discuss that with him, but Feb. 29 won't be back for 4 years. Sucks. A confluence of BS caused this. Largely me. The magic is turning black.
RIngo weighs about 14 pounds, wears no collar, may limp a bit, quite healthy, very fast, and sweet, and he's in love with a flash of creamy intensity which might as well be an energy drink.

All my people are great dogs

Not Danes. Although I met a Dane. Not a meta-Dane. Well, actually, yes a Danish-American from Greenwich Village.

And all my dogs are great people. The question is, if you talk to your dogs a little -- like say "Fetch, Ringo!" no one calls you on it. Like, that's okay, even though no way in hell Ringo will fetch squat. But if you say "So guys, I think I'm getting a handle on this post-modern- and deconstructionism; essentially it's just a reaction to phenomenology and existentialism that's every bit as self-indulgent and un-disciplined as, say, Sartre or Schopenhauer were...and vague," then maybe you're taking the interaction with the dogs a little too far. I'm just saying.

Really there's nothing any wronger about it than, say, posting a blog that you know at most 2 or 3 of your family members and maybe one employee will read (God Bless you Both!).

And my dogs are really great people. Amazing people. I admire and respect them all. All have patience, fortitude. Some shit in the house. But so do I! I know, too much information.

So progress this week. I have not succeeded in taking a vacation. Far from it. The last two days have been so busy/frantic that I feel like my tongue is hanging out, dog-tongue-like, and my body aches (I feel old). But I have moved through some emotional stages it seems. From extreme lonliness/depression and, well, downright insanity -- through a period of grace in which there is no blinding affect, just the semblance of a "normal" succession of pleasant or unpleasant feelings near the middle of the scale --- to the last couple days, a bunch of anger. The F word popping out of my mouth un-bidden and inappropriate.
I have felt that I detest certain people, musicians I am playing with for instance. Not that they play badly. Most are great players. But I'm seeing the flaws and magnifying them. And I am practicing zero forgiveness. It's really pretty cool. For me. I mean, I can be pretty unpleasant/critical, but usually I cap the view off with the old AD dictum "If somebody is acting shitty, it means they're having a rough time themselves." An axiom. (Like it's almost-mirror image, if I'm pissed there's something wrong with me.) And I forgive, everybody, seeing their human-ness. The thing is, this wild anger that's spilling out recently feels like a kind of red carpet leading me somplace I need to go.
I AM angry. Need to feel it. Ditch it. Get on to the next thing, hopefully something more like the grace period with emotions varying and near the middle of the scale.
I thought about borrowing one of Frosty's guns and shooting out the streetlight at the extreme east end of Whispering Hollow. Really I don't need a gun though. I could just go take the bulb. There's nobody over there most of the time. So who am I mad at? Nobody really. I'm just scared. Seems like everybody I want to talk to is dead. And most of the folks that want to talk to me are annoying, really annoying.
So, thank God for how great the dogs are. I wish they knew how to make the bed. I don't mind doing the laundry.
But I can't make a bed worth crap.

apologi

sorry about last night. I was pretty dark, and there were syntactical mystakes and mspellings. I was falling asleep as I wrote and finally gave up.
Tonight I have a modicum of fear, was jazzed that someone (someone I know) responded succinctly to my ramble of last night.
And today I was a good musician. Pulled off a trio with Frosty and Harvey, and yet another random person complimented me on my singing. The whole world has gone nuts. And some of the world just has its nuts gone.
We'll see about mine, or if I mess my drawers at my gig tomorrow.
I'm a pro. It should flow.
Comments that razz me
Really jazz me
I suspect a daughter
Lurking in the water
Jerking like a fish
On a line
One of my lines
With the syntax
No one can afford.
They should withhold a bit
From each paychick.

Yours in Crisis
John J Menudo

Wane and the Drought

On June 25, '07 there was a break. The hand in the cookie jar was slapped, the Best Western housed the Worst of the Best'uns for a few days, then onward and downward. Then the owner of the cookies left (with the jar presumably -- or most of it), and now here we are. Waning interest in a variety of things. Steadily waning. The fiddle camps turned up the juice on fiddle, but it has waned. The meetings of the secret sobriety society turned up the juice on sobriety, but that has waned. Creative juices are drying up on all fronts. There was, last year, much journaling, poetry, ad music. Now there is no journaling (who wants to read this crap?), little blogging. We're in drought and there is for real extreme fire danger. My myspace profile is boring, and I barely blog. My most passionate feeling of the week after the 2 days of suicidal depression was feeling of "Pore Hillary!_
This is merely a phenomenon. a wet farft. a bit of puke in the gullet. It will pass. But I feel I will never journal again.
Thank God? No, damn shame. Drought. Extreme fire dangler. The journals are so nice to come across 14 years hence.
Because I've always been clever. Less so now as you see............

The inward chapping coincides (as God laughs) with a series of golden opportunities for creativity, devotion, insight, trustworthiness, fun, joy, fame, and even maybe chicks.... Junior Brown has asked me to produce a family TV show featuring his musical performances live in the studio. with famous guests no less. And asap!
Bob Schneider, the most inspiring artist with whom I have ever worked, has invited me back onstage with him. Challenges at work are manageable. Staff is supportive. But I don't got the juice. Not today. Although folks have fallen miraculously in place to help with the Junior deal and I truly believe Junior is ready, I am not hungry for this.
Bob gave me 17 mp3s to check out. I've barely listened. Of course I'll do a lot of wingin it on stage, and it will be fine, but.... a drought, a waning, a drying up, a shrivelling.

No more journals no poetry. No book I am excited about, although I still am liking the Jacobs book on city planning and dabbling ever so slowly in the Black Swan (which is secretly about how stupid I am, wanting to be empirical and all). And I'm supposed to do my second like lightning jazz (but I don't want it to be jazz) record in a day or so next week. The concept is to go down and dirty and simple with the awesome glitch that I will be a featured vocalists and will do at least 2 duets, maybe more, with Alice Mama Saffer and Emily Gimble. Maybe Megan Melara will sing one or two and co-write. Oh and I worked on 6 new tunes with Harvey this week, and many are good (since he's so darn poetic among autre choses.)
THe creative projects are overwhelming. It rains it pours, there is doubt and drought. Drought in the spirit. And I think it's so simple stupid. Sex! We ran plum out!

But don't let me bore you. Stop reading. "Cause this stuff is dry as am I as a bone.
My wife and I renewed our vows last week, and I think she didn't really even know it. Now I think maybe I can run around on her. Now that we're renewed and all. She has encouraged it. The good Italian wife. I thought I remembered her having some Irish, Cherokee, maybe Dutch or German and Native American blood. In any case, I think I'm either gonna try a couple hours with a professional hooker, or go eHarmony. The guys all look cute in the commercials, even if the girls are clearly not of the same aristocratic demeanor of my beloved. Former now renewed beloved. What a wonderful mysterious person. Wonder how her cholestrerol is. Wane north of here. I drought, it's a problem.

It is though. It is the hand of death.