My memory of Davy Jones will forever consist of an image I have of him sitting across the dining room table from me, dressed in a grey shirt and black blazer. He might have black jeans on, or blue jeans, I don't remember. I remember he was drinking red wine. His girlfriend, considerably younger than him (bravo, Davy, she was fine), is in a pink sweater and khaki pants drinking white wine. Davy is totally the center of attention tonight, and we're all totally okay with that. Here I am, 13 or 14 years old, too young to have experienced the Monkees in their moment but certainly not ignorant to their lasting impact, and what a marvelous trip it was to have the guy who sang "Wake up sleeeepy Jean, oh what can it mean to uh...day-DREAM believer and uh, homecoming queen!" sitting across from me, vibing off the conversation and laughing and making us laugh. We didn't talk about the Monkees too much, no, Davy knew something about the higher level of vibration and he kept us there. I brought up a funny recording I heard of a Japanese singer named Dokaka who has recorded some hilarious a cappella metal tunes, in particular his Raining Blood cover, during which he makes a strange sound by buzzing his lips loose and plucking them with a finger, like you do when you're a kid trying to make silly sounds. I was trying to describe it to Davy, who seemed a little confused, but then he clarified the matter by demonstrating the technique I was describing. Amidst the uproar, and maybe my dad asking "what are you doing?", Davy pronounced that he was practicing his heavy-metal-a-cappella techniques, didn't-ya-know?
Even up until a few days ago, I've told stories about that evening to many different people I have come across. Again and again, an important detail comes up about Davy: his humanity. When he walked into our vestibule that evening, he was a myth to me. He still is, in some ways, but at the table that night he brought us all into the moment, and he made us laugh like an old friend does. He infatuated us with his spirit and good nature, like a new friend does when we meet them, vibing off the newfound connection. It wasn't a celebrity walking into our house that day, it was just a dude with his girlfriend happy that some people had invited them for dinner.
Now that Davy Jones has left his body, he's out there, the particles of his humanity floating further and further out into the world he took them from. It warms me to think that little bits of Davy Jones' essence are working their way into the dark corners of the universe, into hearts and minds of both the despairing and the jovial. Anyone could use a dose of the good energy this guy had, and now he shares it with all of us. As we mourn his death and reflect on his life, we can imbibe his spirit and feel his love and energy fuel our hearts, our voices, our dreams. Thanks Davy.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Seattle to Sacramento
Dr. E. Zmon dropped me off with his freshly freshened orange 1971 Chevy truck at King Street station in Seattle Chinatown at five past nine in the morning. The sky was clear except for a few wisps of cloud, but really a beautiful day for Seattle by all counts. I had two guitars and an amalgamation of bags and backpacks and shoes tied together, an amalgamation that weighed in at about 75 lbs. The doctor tossed me one last parting gift over the truck bed from where he was standing on the other side, a sealed pouch that I stuck in the smaller backpack belonging to the amalgamation. We said our goodbyes, shook hands and patted each other on the back, and I left the orange truck and my life in Seattle to write a new chapter in Colorado.
I got my boarding pass five minutes before baggage check was over, and I scrambled to untie all the pieces from my big pack, which I tossed on the belt along with a hard-case guitar. Five dollars to keep that guitar out of harms way. A worthy price, I thought.
Mine was the last car of the train, car 1113, and I boarded, went upstairs and grabbed the first seat I saw, directly in front of the stairs. I put most of my crap in the space above and had the rest of my crap by my feet. A blanket, a guitar, a bottle of wine, headphones, laptop and dj materials, a bag of salty junk food and instant soup and candy bars, and the doctor's medicine.
At the first stop, I think it might have been Tacoma, I couldn't wait any longer and I wanted to step outside and enjoy a little puff. I cracked the vacuum seal and immediately it smelled as if the ghost of Bob Marley himself was in my backpack with no desire to be contained.
I got back on the train, and people walking by were sniffing the air saying, "Damn it smells good here," and then some old black guy said "mannn, all we got is these cigarettes I want some of that shit" Lots of giggles and looks and "ooo-wees!" filled the train car before and after every stop thereafter.
Portland was the biggest stop yet. It was a little before noon, and lots of people got off, and lots of people got on. Someone all in black sat down in the row behind and to the right of me, talking loudly on the phone. It was a girl, and she could have been talking to her boyfriend or some friend but that didn't matter...every word she said was like a line from a movie, and I chuckled and sometimes outright laughed at her punchlines. Her voice was slightly hoarse from smoking and talking loudly all the time, with a papery valour that sounds dry enough sometimes that you almost need a glass of water, but with enough honey that you can just listen, breathe it in, drink it down and revel in the beauty of a mysterious voice.
"I'm going downstairs," she said to the person on the other end of the line, "I can't say what I want with all these PEOPLE around," and she said people with a deep plosive that made the sentence drop and fall to the ground like a brick. Wonderful. She went downstairs and I listened to the rhythm of her sybillance patterns echoing up through the stairwell.
This girl was kickass. All she talked about was drinking and smoking and being wild and free in general, playing shows and throwing bar parties...I knew we would be friends, all I needed to do was say, "Come on, sit over here..." and she was back in her seat, sitting down. I looked over and no sound came out at first, maybe a slight cock of the head, a pat on the seat, and finally "Do you want to sit here with me?"
"I'd love to, that would be great," she said.
She told me about hopping trains, about how you can't hop a train from Seattle to San Francisco because you go through more than 20 tunnels where, if you were in an open boxcar you would surely suffocate. When trains go through tunnels, she said, they travel very slowly, at about 2-5 mph. Carbon monoxide fills the tunnel, and while normal riders are safe in the ventilated passenger cars, boxcar riders are faced with the perils of CO poisoning and suffocation. Some wear gasmasks, others nothing but a bandana for protection, but regardless trainhopping (especially through tunnels) is a dangerous propostion. Of all the train hoppers she knew, including herself, she's only known two to survive the journey from Seattle to San Fran. I was glad now that I hadn't hopped a train from Seattle, a thought that had crossed my mind for a moment but then fortunately drifted off in the breeze.
Her name was Estzer (it said on her ID), born in Hungary and since had moved to Portland and then Oakland. She had been visiting some friends in the former city, and was now on her way home to the latter. Estzer and I finished the bottle of wine I had cracked that morning, along with overpriced Amtrak bar drinks, and we sat in the observation car and met a blond-haired suit named Marcus. Apparently the suit was all a decoy because he was talking about how excited he was for Burning Man, and how his harvest was supposed to be done just weeks before. Marcus got off in Eugene, and the three of us smoked a little joint before Estzer and I sent Marcus on his way.
After Eugene Estzer found a messy-lookin kid who blew her up a xanny bar. She came back to our seat and took out her phone, ready to call this old friend in Portland who she had been arguing with the night before. "Ok get ready I gotta make a prrretty emotional phone call," she said with the emphasis on the rrr in pretty. She went down to the bottom of the stairwell and started talking. It sounded like it was going well until she came back up, almost ready to cry. She told me, "I was about to tell this person who I have been in love with for 3 years how I feel about them, and then service cut out! WHY!?!" Wasn't the right time I told her, and she said "Apparently not," with a grumbly sigh. "Fuck."
She had Clerks on DVD and I had a laptop, so we put it in and turned the volume up and started watching Dante and Randal and Jay & Silent Bob and then scrappy-doo with the Xanax came to our seat trying asking Estzer for his ten-dollar bill. "I think you walked off with my ten homie. It was rolled up, had some powder on it—" the strung-out sixteen-year-old didn't get a chance to finish, because Eztser, almost leaping out of her seat and down his throat exclaimed, "I don't have your ten dollars, look I got a hundred bucks in my wallet and you think I give a FUCK about your ten dollars?" I thought she was gonna push him right down the stairs; there was fire in her voice and this kid looked like...well, a kid strung out on downers. He didn't stand a chance. She emptied her wallet, showed him she had nothing with powder or the like on it, nothing rolled up, tossed him an extra "fuck off" and he walked away and we giggled.
Sometime around the hockey game on the quick-stop roof Estzer got back in touch with her friend from Portland, texting back and forth and I was rooting for her, but to no avail. Her friend didn't seem much interested in conversation, at least that's what I gathered from her end of things. We let it pass by, kept on laughing at Clerks and about Randal's cousin who breaks his neck sucking his own dick and then uproars when Dante and Randal run out of the funeral home and Dante slides across the hood of his car and they speed away after Randal knocks the casket over. "She's dead, its not like you're worried if she's gonna break something...at least I put her back in! (probably quoted erroneously, my apologies to Kevin Smith)"
It was getting dark outside, and the stewardess asked us to turn off the movie. "Its only got thirty minutes left, we can turn it down a little," I said, and she smiled and said that was okay and she walked on further down the car. With the volume low, we leaned in to hear, and our faces touched. We stayed there, leaning in, cheek to cheek, and I could smell her scent and her breath and I could feel her hair brushing against my ear.
When the movie was over, and when we were ready for sleep, she said "Is it alright if I put my legs over you?"
"That's absolutely fine," I said, "go right ahead." We sidled in closer and closer, until we were nearly knotted together, holding hands and giving little sighs of comfort, the sigh that you give when there's someone there, just someone there to love you and be loved by you. We held hands, I comforted her about her friend from Portland, and she comforted me to sleep, washing away any fear or anxiety that might have been lingering in my heart.
Sacramento came all too soon. A little before six in the morning we saw city lights, woke up and untied our bodies, and Estzer pulled out a cigarette and went downstairs and outside. I asked a mom with her kids if we were in fact in Sactown, and my suspicion was confirmed. I gathered my belongings and headed for the platform.
There was Estzer, black bangs and black glasses, a black pack of cigarettes, black shirt, black jacket black bat belt, black packpack; all a strange juxtaposition to the vibrance of her soul. She dragged her cigarette, and we talked of our journeys ahead. She was going to be in Oakland soon, and I had a six hour layover before heading west across the mountains to the land of milk and honey. The conductor called all aboard, and we thanked each other profusely for the best train ride either of us had ever had. We exchanged numbers, and I told her I would call her if I was ever in Oakland. She told me to text her from the train, "Keep me entertained," she said. We hugged goodbye, and I made my way to the waiting room as she boarded back on the train to Oakland. As soon as I sat down on the wooden peuh, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket: "NEW TXT MSG from Estzer". I opened my phone, and a bittersweet smile spread across my heart because then I knew that she had appreciated everything we had shared in our brief moment together, and I knew that it could be the last time I ever saw her. "I miss you already" it said. Later, after a few texts I told her, "I miss you too."
Its 8:21 AM now, and I'm in the Starbucks down the street from the Sacramento Valley railway station, waiting to take the 11:09 Chicago-bound to Denver. An old life lies behind me, and a new one lies ahead, but here and now there is only here and now, and whatever joys this moment brings we must grasp with all our might because in the blink of an eye they could be gone, and it is up to us to revel in that joy and happiness while we can feel it.
I got my boarding pass five minutes before baggage check was over, and I scrambled to untie all the pieces from my big pack, which I tossed on the belt along with a hard-case guitar. Five dollars to keep that guitar out of harms way. A worthy price, I thought.
Mine was the last car of the train, car 1113, and I boarded, went upstairs and grabbed the first seat I saw, directly in front of the stairs. I put most of my crap in the space above and had the rest of my crap by my feet. A blanket, a guitar, a bottle of wine, headphones, laptop and dj materials, a bag of salty junk food and instant soup and candy bars, and the doctor's medicine.
At the first stop, I think it might have been Tacoma, I couldn't wait any longer and I wanted to step outside and enjoy a little puff. I cracked the vacuum seal and immediately it smelled as if the ghost of Bob Marley himself was in my backpack with no desire to be contained.
I got back on the train, and people walking by were sniffing the air saying, "Damn it smells good here," and then some old black guy said "mannn, all we got is these cigarettes I want some of that shit" Lots of giggles and looks and "ooo-wees!" filled the train car before and after every stop thereafter.
Portland was the biggest stop yet. It was a little before noon, and lots of people got off, and lots of people got on. Someone all in black sat down in the row behind and to the right of me, talking loudly on the phone. It was a girl, and she could have been talking to her boyfriend or some friend but that didn't matter...every word she said was like a line from a movie, and I chuckled and sometimes outright laughed at her punchlines. Her voice was slightly hoarse from smoking and talking loudly all the time, with a papery valour that sounds dry enough sometimes that you almost need a glass of water, but with enough honey that you can just listen, breathe it in, drink it down and revel in the beauty of a mysterious voice.
"I'm going downstairs," she said to the person on the other end of the line, "I can't say what I want with all these PEOPLE around," and she said people with a deep plosive that made the sentence drop and fall to the ground like a brick. Wonderful. She went downstairs and I listened to the rhythm of her sybillance patterns echoing up through the stairwell.
This girl was kickass. All she talked about was drinking and smoking and being wild and free in general, playing shows and throwing bar parties...I knew we would be friends, all I needed to do was say, "Come on, sit over here..." and she was back in her seat, sitting down. I looked over and no sound came out at first, maybe a slight cock of the head, a pat on the seat, and finally "Do you want to sit here with me?"
"I'd love to, that would be great," she said.
She told me about hopping trains, about how you can't hop a train from Seattle to San Francisco because you go through more than 20 tunnels where, if you were in an open boxcar you would surely suffocate. When trains go through tunnels, she said, they travel very slowly, at about 2-5 mph. Carbon monoxide fills the tunnel, and while normal riders are safe in the ventilated passenger cars, boxcar riders are faced with the perils of CO poisoning and suffocation. Some wear gasmasks, others nothing but a bandana for protection, but regardless trainhopping (especially through tunnels) is a dangerous propostion. Of all the train hoppers she knew, including herself, she's only known two to survive the journey from Seattle to San Fran. I was glad now that I hadn't hopped a train from Seattle, a thought that had crossed my mind for a moment but then fortunately drifted off in the breeze.
Her name was Estzer (it said on her ID), born in Hungary and since had moved to Portland and then Oakland. She had been visiting some friends in the former city, and was now on her way home to the latter. Estzer and I finished the bottle of wine I had cracked that morning, along with overpriced Amtrak bar drinks, and we sat in the observation car and met a blond-haired suit named Marcus. Apparently the suit was all a decoy because he was talking about how excited he was for Burning Man, and how his harvest was supposed to be done just weeks before. Marcus got off in Eugene, and the three of us smoked a little joint before Estzer and I sent Marcus on his way.
After Eugene Estzer found a messy-lookin kid who blew her up a xanny bar. She came back to our seat and took out her phone, ready to call this old friend in Portland who she had been arguing with the night before. "Ok get ready I gotta make a prrretty emotional phone call," she said with the emphasis on the rrr in pretty. She went down to the bottom of the stairwell and started talking. It sounded like it was going well until she came back up, almost ready to cry. She told me, "I was about to tell this person who I have been in love with for 3 years how I feel about them, and then service cut out! WHY!?!" Wasn't the right time I told her, and she said "Apparently not," with a grumbly sigh. "Fuck."
She had Clerks on DVD and I had a laptop, so we put it in and turned the volume up and started watching Dante and Randal and Jay & Silent Bob and then scrappy-doo with the Xanax came to our seat trying asking Estzer for his ten-dollar bill. "I think you walked off with my ten homie. It was rolled up, had some powder on it—" the strung-out sixteen-year-old didn't get a chance to finish, because Eztser, almost leaping out of her seat and down his throat exclaimed, "I don't have your ten dollars, look I got a hundred bucks in my wallet and you think I give a FUCK about your ten dollars?" I thought she was gonna push him right down the stairs; there was fire in her voice and this kid looked like...well, a kid strung out on downers. He didn't stand a chance. She emptied her wallet, showed him she had nothing with powder or the like on it, nothing rolled up, tossed him an extra "fuck off" and he walked away and we giggled.
Sometime around the hockey game on the quick-stop roof Estzer got back in touch with her friend from Portland, texting back and forth and I was rooting for her, but to no avail. Her friend didn't seem much interested in conversation, at least that's what I gathered from her end of things. We let it pass by, kept on laughing at Clerks and about Randal's cousin who breaks his neck sucking his own dick and then uproars when Dante and Randal run out of the funeral home and Dante slides across the hood of his car and they speed away after Randal knocks the casket over. "She's dead, its not like you're worried if she's gonna break something...at least I put her back in! (probably quoted erroneously, my apologies to Kevin Smith)"
It was getting dark outside, and the stewardess asked us to turn off the movie. "Its only got thirty minutes left, we can turn it down a little," I said, and she smiled and said that was okay and she walked on further down the car. With the volume low, we leaned in to hear, and our faces touched. We stayed there, leaning in, cheek to cheek, and I could smell her scent and her breath and I could feel her hair brushing against my ear.
When the movie was over, and when we were ready for sleep, she said "Is it alright if I put my legs over you?"
"That's absolutely fine," I said, "go right ahead." We sidled in closer and closer, until we were nearly knotted together, holding hands and giving little sighs of comfort, the sigh that you give when there's someone there, just someone there to love you and be loved by you. We held hands, I comforted her about her friend from Portland, and she comforted me to sleep, washing away any fear or anxiety that might have been lingering in my heart.
Sacramento came all too soon. A little before six in the morning we saw city lights, woke up and untied our bodies, and Estzer pulled out a cigarette and went downstairs and outside. I asked a mom with her kids if we were in fact in Sactown, and my suspicion was confirmed. I gathered my belongings and headed for the platform.
There was Estzer, black bangs and black glasses, a black pack of cigarettes, black shirt, black jacket black bat belt, black packpack; all a strange juxtaposition to the vibrance of her soul. She dragged her cigarette, and we talked of our journeys ahead. She was going to be in Oakland soon, and I had a six hour layover before heading west across the mountains to the land of milk and honey. The conductor called all aboard, and we thanked each other profusely for the best train ride either of us had ever had. We exchanged numbers, and I told her I would call her if I was ever in Oakland. She told me to text her from the train, "Keep me entertained," she said. We hugged goodbye, and I made my way to the waiting room as she boarded back on the train to Oakland. As soon as I sat down on the wooden peuh, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket: "NEW TXT MSG from Estzer". I opened my phone, and a bittersweet smile spread across my heart because then I knew that she had appreciated everything we had shared in our brief moment together, and I knew that it could be the last time I ever saw her. "I miss you already" it said. Later, after a few texts I told her, "I miss you too."
Its 8:21 AM now, and I'm in the Starbucks down the street from the Sacramento Valley railway station, waiting to take the 11:09 Chicago-bound to Denver. An old life lies behind me, and a new one lies ahead, but here and now there is only here and now, and whatever joys this moment brings we must grasp with all our might because in the blink of an eye they could be gone, and it is up to us to revel in that joy and happiness while we can feel it.
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