die murmeltiere kommen

Listening to Brother Iz - Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World

I hereby declare that winter has been defeated, Aslan is on the move, it's a rocket summer, die murmeltiere kommen. I got off of work today, changed, and walked straight out into this amazing beautiful sunny day with a warm breeze stirring the trees and blowing the last traces of winter away. As I walked back to Aarons house I glanced up at the once snow-covered Giants Head and was surprised to see only patches of snow, as if it was winters last stand and it was dying. Death dies inevitably. It was as if God was reminding us all of the resurection, a metaphor on a colossal scale. Then I walked into the bookstore to buy a comic before the bookstore closed and as I looked around, Brother Iz came on the radio with this medley and the storekeeper opened the door and the wild wind whipped leaves from the sunny street into the store and I stood there and took it in and after I bought my comic I walked back out and strolled down the street, holding my jacket in one hand because it was too hot out to wear it. What a wonderful world. (If you didn't get the rocket summer reference, go get Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and read the first chapter)

fool sitting here typing

behind the scenes on the set of White Trash and Beardo

I failed to finish the ballad of White Trash and Beardo, but rest assured it is currently underway. I've got this really old anthology of the works of Longfellow that I've had for a while, so I decided to start reading it. The first work is Evangaline, a ten page or so poem/prose (I'm really not sure what it would be classified as) about the Acadians. Anyways, it inspired me so I'm writing the ballad of White Trash and Beardo as an epic poem, but I'm still on only the third stanza because I don't have my computer down in the valley (not Happy Valley, the Farmhouse is on a hill). The first characters I'm introducing are the Ballcaps who live in Trashcan Village also known as RVland (there's no comma between Trashcan Village and RVland, it's all one name). Trashcan Village also known as RVland is inspired by the RV park that Sam and I pushed the Jetta into to find some jumper cables, but it's also inspired by the grunge of Penticton (in fact the Ballcaps are inspired by three people standing by the side of the road in Penticton that we laughed at when we were looking for black shirts for Sam's wedding). There is also a garbage can fire that's inspired mostly by our barrel fires out back of the Farmhouse. Essentially the entire epic will draw from my experiences with the white trash aspect the Okanagan, the main characters are even customers in the Summerland Tim Hortons. There, a pretty vague and uninteresting behind the scenes look at the ballad of White Trash and Beardo. Seriously though, if you could actually read it or understand the epic storyline, it would be way more interesting.

zen master

character study

So I was listening to Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" and I noticed the number of random characters thrown into the song that had crazy names like Cinderella, The Phantom of the Opera, and Cassanova. Then I started looking through some of his songs and I noticed that he almost always used pseudonames for the characters in his songs, so I got inspired and started writing up a list of characters that I've had on my mind. My list so far:
White trash
Beardo
Roosvelt
St. Matthew
Soundmime (from a bit of a lyric that I wrote)

This is definately a short blog, but that's all that was on my mind. Next post expect to see the ballad of White Trash and Beardo.

soundmime

memory flooding

Last night I stayed up really late and listened to music and stuff. I started listening to the Beatles, Help, and that brought back a whole bunch of memories, some of my favorites and I just sat around and remembered certain times and places and people. At 2:00am I took a walk through the vinyard above the Mansion. There were no stars because it was clouded over, but because Summerland is mostly a retirement community so there's not a lot of lights and because of our location on the other side of Giants Head on the top of a hill, I could see the whole valley stretched out and the glow off of the surrounding towns lighting up the sky in places, it was pretty breathtaking. Also it was completely silent, no cars screeching, no train, not even the rumble of a highway or the sound of the wind. It was completely silent and I stood in the middle of the vineyard and was just quiet and just stood there, until I could hear the residue from all the sounds in my ears buzzing until it was deafening. It was beautiful. Then I walked over the hill in the vineyard and sat on the road at the base of Giants head and wrote the first verse and the chorus of a song about this one time when I walked on a frozen pond in the dark with some great people, one of my favorite memories of all time. Top 5 definately. Then I walked back and jammed with the night on my harmonica and found this two-note progression that I found on a train this one time and it brought back even more memories. I was recalling moments and people all night it seemed, every little thing I'd do would trigger a new train of them and even though I was living in the moment I was awash with memories. I think I want to go back to the Lower Mainland or move into Kelowna because no matter where you are and what you're doing, no matter how beautiful nature is, no matter how quiet, no matter how majestic, it doesn't matter if you don't have anyone to share it with. I've been wondering what I'm doing up here and I've started thinking of this stage of my life as my time in the wilderness, kindof a formative period where I figure out who I am and what I'm going to do with my life, but I can't wait to see everybody again because I miss you all desperately.

soundmime