Flesh and Bone

I just increased the text limit on my phone plan.  Not by much, but still, it leaves me with this thought:  I've had just about enough of virtual life.  I want the real thing.  I want rain on my face, dirt on my shoes.  I want flesh and bone.  Facebook, texting, email, even this stupid blog, no matter how many people are involved, do nothing compared to a pint with one person-in-person or a walk in the woods.

Homeless

There are some pretty big parts of my childhood that I can't simply go back and revisit.  Today, for instance, I couldn't walk to my elementary schoolhouse in Kananga, Zaire and hoist myself up to one of the locked library's high windows, work it open and hide out in the biographies; I couldn't push a rusty bicycle rim down a two track dirt road, barefoot and zigzagging the goats and guinea hens.  I have nostalgia, but it is often intangible and scattered.

Last night Rachel and I saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Rialto in Atlanta.  In a word, the show was amazing, everyone should see them.  In more than a word, I was transported, and here's why:  

Sometimes I get a whiff of something, or hear a song that automatically associates me with a time in my life.  Fire and smoke tend to take me back to my kidhood in Africa, but only for seconds--brushfires in the sawgrass, palm nuts oozing oil onto hot coals.

But the show last night, for more than two hours, sustained me.  The voices of those men brought back days and nights, mangos crashing onto a tin roof, the babas, sometimes naked beating the eerie glunk-glunk water drums, sometimes carrying their full body weight in fruit or diesel balanced on their heads, the crack and thud of the mortar and pestle beating manioc, men burning the sawgrass to hunt the animals within.  Always singing.  Singing from behind the thatched huts, across the fields, the rolling airstrip.  Singing bouncing under the umbrella trees and across the Lulua.  Singing and occasionally swinging a lazy switch at a trailing goat.  Singing from the church down the block, the disco up the street.  At the corner bread seller's.  Singing in the markets as the sun cooked us all and the stink of slowly turning meat and woodsmoke crept around.  Singing alone or with friends. Everything was singing, and I thank my own good fortune that singing brought me again to that place in good company.

The Stinky Kid

I resisted posting this because even thinking it made me feel petty enough to be back in 4th grade.  But seriously, yesterday I sat next to the smelliest person I've ever been lucky enough to smell.  I normally don't care about a stranger's level of cleanliness, maybe just pass it off as live and let live, but this dude was a biological weapon, and he was killing me.  He stunk in a way that would ruin your next two meals.  And all in a cinderblock classroom where the windows are riveted shut, the air doesn't flow, so the stink takes on a presence of a heavy who is holding your face in a barrel of rainwater.  Only not so clean and refreshing.  He smelled like the dark ages.  My dog never smelled this bad in salmon spawning season. 

There are two sides to this equation:

1-I should have said something to him.  Maybe using a bit more discretion than posting him in a blog, but he needs to know.  I'm not his friend, don't know his name, but as a decent act for him, me and all people everywhere, I shouldn't have let the stink go on stinking as if it didn't exist.  Am I a coward or is this normal fight/flight response to an olfactory crisis?

2-He should know better.  Soap isn't that expensive.  I really can't imagine that a person can smell that bad and not have a vague idea.  I don't think that humans by nature have a tendency to derive pleasure from fermenting themselves.  In that light, I think he might actually be an aggressive stinker, which brings me back to my first point.  Time to be a hero?  Is this my higher calling?

My dad passed along some wisdom that was passed on to him in a quiet corner of the Alaska state capitol:  It takes a while to realize that the guy who tells you your fly is unzipped is your friend.  Now maybe I was repulsed into just not wanting to be his friend.  Maybe...  And I could buy that.  Our smell is a presence that precedes and often trumps the other senses.  But no one else is taking on this task, so maybe it is up to me.  We'll see if it persists.  I'll let you know.

Until then, keep washing behind your ears like mom told you.  And for God's sake, if you're my friend and I show up stinking some day, let me know.

Jazz, Birds and Spring Fever

I got to see my good friend Paul play in Raleigh this weekend.  His trio is tight as tight.  The venue was on Hillsboro St. right off of the main rail artery, which was a nice compliment.  The music stands on its own with grit and stature, but I felt like a new level of legitimacy was bought between the coffee and jazz and occasional rumble and horn blast.  After all, this is music for the city, shoulder-to-shoulder mornings and evenings, the fluttering of progress, the buck and chill of a hardscrabble American metropolitan hulk.  Raleigh doesn't quite fit the bill for setting, but I appreciated Amtrak's weighing in on the matter.

I also thought of hummingbirds.  Long segue, I know, but leap with me... (Jazz, Charlie Parker, birds, hummingbirds) Last summer a pair of them spent the days dive bombing each other and dogfighting over feeder rights.  I remembered holding one as I was releasing it from being trapped in the garage.  It was as light as paper, brave, staring me in the eye, and gripping a finger tightly.  Just a whisper of a body, but what a heart!  I felt like I was holding an oversized electron, vibrating even in its stillness.  I was and still am fascinated.  The weather turned warm recently and now I think of hummingbirds.  Hummingbirds and motorcycles.

It took five hours in the car coming back from Raleigh today.  When I left, I had decided against riding the motorcycle in favor of bringing a stack of books that I didn't even look at while I was there.  Who am I kidding?  So, I spent five hours looking at other people on motorcycles, none as lovely as mine. I must have lost track of my priorities somewhere...  So, I'm going to spend as much of this week on two wheels as possible to redeem myself.

I'm also starting to get a pretty bad case of wanderlust.  A trip to Australia is just around the corner, but that is another post.

Madness

I went to see a musical production of Reefer Madness with one of the coolest girls ever.  It was tons of fun and at times made me think that maybe I should start working on a pot habit.  At least a brownie habit.  Jesus made an appearance with Tom Jones style quipping and a golden microphone.  That sealed the deal for me.

I keep going back to a nagging thought, though, about the relationship that a play has with its audience.  SC is a ridiculously conservative state.  I've been here for a year and a half and still have a lot to learn about social protocol, but some topics--mostly in the sex, drugs, and rock & roll vein--are clearly only for the speakeasy.  So, it was strange to be watching a play about sex, drugs, and rock & roll among people who were clearly a little squeamish about it.  Maybe I was a little surprised that nobody fainted or started speaking in tongues.

It made me think of the time I groaned loudly during a play at an especially quiet part just after a really bad line delivery.  (accidental)  And that made me think of visiting an awesome gospel church in North Carolina. (Amen) And also when a friend was ejected from a theatre for holding his chest during a really bad show and yelling "hep me, hep me" a la Blazing Saddles.  (totally on purpose)  Really, shouldn't the audience be engaged with the cast and vice-versa?  OK, maybe not so much, but a little?  

It was good to see such a fun play.  It might have been interesting if the Madness had really taken hold of the audience, though...