Brush

We were relaxing after a long week.  I reached to scratch the back of my head.  My fingers flowed freely through my long brown hair until I reached a spot about six inches above my neck.  I touched a fuzzy clump of hair the size of a silver dollar.  It was flat and tangled in a dreadlocked knot.  As my fingers explored I discovered that this main hair clump branched into tributaries and veins of tangled mess.  I asked my wife for help.

"Everyone girl learns this lesson when she is seven." she said laughing and brushing violently through the tangles.  "I have a pixie cut in my second grade picture because my mom followed through with her threats.  When is the last time you brushed your hair?"

I have not brushed my hair in the two or three years that I have been letting it grow out.  I certainly will now, maybe daily.  It was an embarrassing and slightly painful experience to need my wife to brush the tangles from my hair.  At least she enjoyed it.  Uncle Mike had mentioned to her just yesterday that he uses a Detangling spray on his hair, before he brushes it.

Lights

Saturday night.  The show was over and the amps were back in our cars.  The bartenders closed out the cash register and the band got paid.  I fired up my truck and headed home.

The first thing I saw is that instead of a taxi at the taxi stand there is an SUV that I can tell is an unmarked police officer.  Immediately the lights of the SUV turn on and pulls out behind me.

I'm not drunk but I drank drinks earlier, when it was Early.  Now that it's Late, if the officer is bored and wants to fuck with me, I am in a vulnerable position.  I'm trying to remember how the laws work.  What's the difference between taking a breathalyzer and not taking one?

All those horrible thoughts took one second.  During the first half of second number two I determined that my lights are NOT ON and I turned them on.

The cop followed me for half a mile before deciding that I am more dumb than drunk and not worth the time.  At some point I check my rear view and the SUV is not there any more.

Was he ever there at all?

Yes.  Yes he was.

I know because I received these texts from Dennis:

1:43am

You sir, are a lucky duck.
One more second, and you
would've seen the blues in
yer rear view!
I prayed for you

I'm assuming you made it home?
....without the blues in the rear view?

I was a moment away from
calling you to yell
LIGHTS!!!

Fall

Adults are not supposed to fall down.

Children fall down.  I remember falling down quite often and always hopping back up.  Head wounds required stitching on two or three separate occasions but I find this to be an acceptable number for the couple decades it took me to learn how to be a human.

Last night I was walking from the gig to my car.  I was not drunk.  My mind was preoccupied with a million thoughts, all sped up on adrenaline from playing rock and roll for the past three hours.  I was getting close to my car and thinking about my questionable parking job and thinking about what I would do if I have been towed and thinking about which band might have played at The Pig that night and thinking about stopping for broccoli bites on the drive home and then I was down.

The main culprit was my own lack of focus but I might argue the pedestrian walkways of Salem, Massachusetts are not exactly level.  The corners of giant slabs of concrete jut out into the path like a miniature mountain range.  My worn out chuck taylors must have clipped an edge and down I went.

Sharp pains ran through my wrist and elbow.  I quickly pulled myself up from the ground, checking to see if any of my parts had broken.  Fortunately, they had not.  From the down the street someone yelled, "Hey buddy, are you alright?" and my heart swelled with the warm joy that only comes from the unsolicited assistance from a stranger, but I was too embarrassed to reply.  I quickly turned and walked away.

This morning I noticed a scrape on my palm as big as two grains of rice next to each other and I put some ointment on it and thought about broken wrists and shattered elbows and the healthcare system and self-employment and the resilience of the human body and how we take our youth for granted.

2016

If I were a gambler I would be willing to gamble that 2016 will prove itself to be "the year we bought a house."

At this point in the process I feel as though I have accidentally waded up to my knees into the infancy of adulthood.

2015

In the year 2015 we went places.

Woodstock, NY for my birthday.

on tour with Mr. Fox we started in Brooklyn, NY.
Raleigh, NC.
Asheville, NC.
Nashville, TN.
Clarksville, TN.
Kentucky
Virginia.
Maryland.

For her birthday we hit Montreal.

Just last week Wilkins drove four hours each way up to the Carrabasset Valley of Maine.  The mountains are beautiful there.