Silver Dagger

I'm on the dark side of a hollow hill
The sun comes up, babe, but it's hard to get my fill
Your blues are rapping and it fits my mood
I'm through with Bibles and I'm through with food
Somebody's calling, trying to track me down
And if I don't answer, I'd hang around
As side-passed lovers lost in the dark
I look for high ground for to build an ark
I can't remember when I felt so free
Maybe September, the year you believed in me
In 1900 and 99
When I found the angels a-drinking wine
Seems every castle is made of sand
The great destroyer sleeps in every man
Here comes my baby, here comes my man
With the silver dagger in his hand
With that silver dagger in his hand

-Gillian Welch

Southbound to Slaughter

For you, my friend, wherever you are right now.

https://soundcloud.com/mila-ringo/southbound-to-slaughter

Put my baby on the evening train
Carry his soul through the wind and the rain
Put my baby on the evening train
Southbound to Slaughter

From out of the past you came to me at last
Drenched in the blood of a restless man
Tied down, tapped out, a drink in your hand
Promise that you'll come back again

It's a step to the left and a step to the right
If you don't quit now you'll be at it all night
Whiskey and wine sending chills up my spine
But I want to see the dawn in his eyes

Put my baby on the evening train
Carry his soul through the wind and the rain
Put my baby on the evening train
Southbound to Slaughter

The devil's in the details or so they say
We can swim in the night, we can drown in the day
That lonesome whistle is calling your name
You're never coming back again

año Nuevo

Well, everyone else is doing these 2012 recap posts so I suppose I'll give one a shot as well. The last year was full of ups and downs for me but overall it was a pretty excellent one.

January was a rough month, I was having some band and relationship issues and business at the restaurant I worked at was incredibly slow. I did get a few nice pictures of us playing at the Broken Neck, however.

Photo by Dave Creaney

In February I got the chance to take a weekend trip to Tucson with my sweet friend Zaaki and his buddies TJ and Joey. We had an amazing time. We couch surfed with a beautiful dancer lady who let me play her accordion, we hiked a peak in the national forest, we camped out under the stars and played music (Joey tap danced on a board!), we skinny dipped in a freezing cold river!

The coldest water

Now that I think about it, March, April, and May are a little bit blurry. I know in March, the Susquehanna Hat Company played a couple of house shows during SXSW and did some busking. My sweet friend Gary was in town and I got to hang with him a little bit. In April I got my beautiful Joshua Tree tattoo from the extremely talented Scott Spencer of The Inkery here in Austin. This was inspired by all the amazing memories I have of being out in the California desert and seeing forests of these bizarre cacti. They're so incredible when you get up close and so eerie from a distance. They all have different numbers of arms and come in all shapes as well. This tattoo means a lot to me and I'm really glad to be able to wear it for the rest of my life. This is not the best picture but it will have to suffice.

In June I had my birthday which was awesome. I started it off with a tarot reading from the lovely Angeliska, which left me motivated, calm, and inspired. a bunch of folks came over to the house and we ate good food and drank and my buddies Z and Derek played some killer digs on accordion and bass balalaika. Later that month I packed up the car with my dear friend and roommate Judy and our buddy Joel and we went on an absolutely mind-blowing two-week road trip. We drove through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and all of California to get to Portland, and on the way back we passed through Idaho and Utah as well. We did tons of camping and hiking, drank way too much coffee and whiskey, met the most amazing people and dogs,and saw some incredible scenery. There are hundreds of pictures from that trip but here are a select few.

We came back in July and I spent the month swimming and planning my next journey. It was on that trip that I decided that I wanted to move to Humboldt, and the last few months have been rife with brainstorming. August was really rough, I dislocated my knee in the early part of the month and spent the rest of it recovering (or trying to). In September I started spending time with a wonderful man named Sanford, he is an accordionist who shares my love of music, travel and adventure (not to mention, him and Seamus were instant best friends). We have many amazing plans together for the future, including but not limited to driving our VW Westfalia camper van on an epic trip to northern California to stay in the summer. So excited! In October we went on a little weekend voyage to the hill country west of Austin. We camped at Enchanted Rock and visited a couple of ghost towns that we located out there.

Right after we came back, my beautiful family came to visit! My mom and both my sisters were in town for several days and it was so great to see them again and show them around Austin. I showed them what it meant to be a Texan which entailed taking them two-stepping at the Broken Spoke. Such fun there.

Right after my family left, the awful restaurant I worked at fired me! Thanks, assholes! I spent all of November looking for work and finally landed a job right after Thanksgiving.

December came and went so fast, I can't believe it's over already. I really, intensely dislike the holidays so I just sort of holed up and acted like they weren't happening. I didn't go home to California, nor did I do anything particularly celebratory. My dear sweet friend Sean (who I wrote about in an earlier post) came to visit on the 15th. It was so unbelievably good to see him. He was supposed to be here for five days but somehow it turned into nine due to missing not one but two 6 am flights! I tried to be responsible, but what can ya do when a handsome fella bats his eyes at you and asks you to stay up late drinking wine with him? Eventually Sean caught a train back to California on Christmas Eve. Secretly I hoped something was going to derail the train or there would be no seats so he'd be forced to stay longer. I was so sad putting him on the train but at the same time so happy we got to spend time together. I've known this man for several years and I don't think we'd ever spent nine solid days together, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Cheers to all of you in 2013.

Otoño

Some things that have been occupying my head space so far this season. Well, it hardly feels like fall here in good ol Austin, where it's summer til' January. It's been in the 80s and 70s so far this "fall," although the leaves are changing color and dropping off the trees, and the sunshine and skies have been beautiful and fair.

1970s Westfalia camper

 

Joshua Tree, 2009

Busking. Photo by Jeremiah Newton

Trilobite tattoo is definitely in my future.

My hero, Carl Sagan.

Eel River

Redwoods.

Tinuviel

The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinuviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.

There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled,
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.

Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.

He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-leaves,
And one by one with sighing sound,
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.

When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again,
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.

Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tinuviel! Tinuviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice lay on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinuviel
That in his arms lay glistening.

As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinuviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.

Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of iron and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless. 

-J.R.R. Tolkien

Letting Go

This photo about sums up how I'm feeling these days. Wandering naked and barefoot through a forest of tall, silent trees, the sun warm on my skin, the gentle breeze sighing, the damp earth rolling away before me.

Photo by David Winge, 2012

 It's finally cooling down here in Austin, and the shift in seasons has brought with it all manner of beautiful, strange, overwhelming, and transformational changes. It's as if someone has dropped a large stone into the middle of a calm lake, and I am watching the ripples and capillary waves glide and stretch out, becoming farther apart, finally reaching the soft sand at the edge of the shore. Change is sweeping across the land and I struggle to explain it. Things are morphing and evolving here for me, shaping and defining who I've been and who I am, providing me with a clear view of my future. a thousand miles away, in my home state of California, things are also changing exponentially, and the winds of fate have brought news of it to my uncertain ears.

How to put such delicate feelings into words? How to catch a moth and set it free without damaging its wings? I fear I am too blunt, too passionate, too invested. I let things seep into my heart as rainwater into an aquifer, and when the thunderheads all vanish I am left staring at the horizon, an empty blue sky as far as I can see, wondering what happened. Forever will I carry these tiny fragments inside myself. The impressions people have made on me, the places I have been, can never be erased, no matter how desperately I may want some of them to be.

Photo by Joel D'angelo, 2012

What is the strange force within us that oft-resists change? I have always been one to scoff at those who are afraid of anything new or different - those who will never leave the town they grew up in, who are cautious in their work, their social and romantic lives, and their travels, because they are worried that their lives will be altered forever. They resist change because it is often accompanied by pain. They avoid taking risks if there is a possibility of a negative consequence. Since I was young I have striven to eradicate this feeling from my life and embrace the forces of change, but in my darkest and weakest moments I can sense that some ugly miniscule shred of it still exists within me. This is the selfish beast that causes my heart to hurt when I see an old lover, when I hear the music that drove me through the countryside alone in the dead of summer, when I am dropped from someone's life without warning like a leaf from a tree.

"The connections run through both time and space...Time has a different quality in a forest, a different kind of flow. Time moves in circles, and events are linked, even if it's not obvious that they are linked. Events in a forest occur with precision in the flow of tree time, like the motions of an endless dance."
-Richard Preston, The Wild Trees

I'm trying to let the wind and the sea take me, so I can float on gentle currents above a deep blue, rocked to sleep as if in the boughs of a redwood.