Flying Back to Seattle to say Good-Bye.

So, at first I thought I was going to be OK with going to see Nails over the Thanksgiving Holiday/first week of December. I was set to do Rapid City, Billings then spend a week in Seattle and then drive to the show in Portland. As the shows got closer, I started to bug out a little over everything.


I went so far as to make the nuttiest Nails dress ever…don’t ask me why. But yeah, I was a little stressed out about the time/money I’d be spending over the two weeks I’d be away.

So many – many people had been asking me since September if I was planning to do Vegas. I wasn’t even sure if I was OK with Portland at that point. Back in September, I’d found out that I was going to have a show in March/April… I really couldn’t afford to do more shows given that….

The other thing that sucked was knowing the tour was nearing an end. Truth be told, the last thing I wanted to do was get on that flight I’d booked to Seattle. I started the tour there back in July. Now it felt like I was going back to the beginning to say good-bye. Of course I wanted to go to the shows and hang out with Abby and Paul… still, it was all so sad.


The day I left, I had to put together my Mum’s Christmas Tree. It’s one of those fake ones – she’s had it for years and it’s now such a piece of crap that I’m the only one who can put it together given how many of those little plastic things you hook the branches in have broken. Past few years I’ve been tying branches together – but at this point its more magic then anything else getting that pathetic thing to stay up.

It was kinda weird putting up the tree so early but she couldn’t wait till I got back on the 8th. It was so weird, I was playing Carmen – I always play my Mix Tape I made back in 1995 (yeah that’s right) It has 4 versions of Happiness in Slavery on there and both versions of Gave up and the best live version of Dead Souls ever. I love that mix, it’s like, Christmas Tradition to put that on while I put up the tree. But I had on Maria Callas…

So – seeing as the Tree looked sorta weird at the end of my Mum’s Thanksgiving table – I store some of her Thanksgiving Decorations and put it on the tree and made Thanksgiving Tree! So now thanks to TR - I made new tradition….


So I got on the plane, and made my peace with the way I was book ending the tour in Seattle. All tours end, and this was so perfect – and I was really lucky to have the show to work on when I got home.


He offers
A handshake
Crooked
Five fingers
They form a pattern
Yet to be matched

On the surface simplicity
But the darkest pit in me
It's pagan poetry
Pagan poetry

Morsecoding signals (signals)
They pulsate (wake me up) and wake me up
(pulsate) from my hibernating



We see no change in sight
Watching her decline
She gets on a midnight plane
She's done it a thousand times


Started watching The Fountain. I was thinking a lot about everything I would have to do for the show, if everything were to work out. So much to do, so many sculptures, how the hell was I going to do it?

I was really starting to freak out. How the hell could I possibly be gone for so long. For so long I debated not doing Portland. I could – I had a flight home still on December 1st, since I wasn’t even going to do Portland. I could still change – I didn’t have to go back on the 8th…. I could go back early and get back to normal life….


Leaving hope – keep the faith – when the war is over…..

I don’t know….

And you never get away
And you never get to take the easy way
And all of this is a consequence
Brought on by our own hand
If you believe in that sort of thing
And did you ever really find
When you close your eyes
Any place that was still
And at peace

And I guess I just wanted to tell you
As the light starts to fade
That you are the reason
That I am not afraid
And I guess I just wanted to mention
As the heavens will fall

We will be together soon if we
Will be anything at all


Oh my god, Letterman. David Letterman is on and as usual he’s afraid of some weird thing and keeps trying to throw things at it. He’s afraid of a stuffed dinosaur someone had brought on the show and throwing ping-pong balls on it. God I love him. Its like Regis Philbin is Everyone’s Grandpa, and David Letterman is Everyone’s Crazy Uncle Dave!

So the plane landed. Paul was super kind enough to pick me up from the airport. Abby called to tell us to get her Taco Bell. Turns out. Abby was sick. I knew she hadn’t been feeling well but when I got in I found out she was super sick. Paul and I talked all the way getting caught up, I even got a Pity Call from the Council Bluff’s show! I do believe that’s the first time someone ever called me from the show. So, kinda weird, I could tell it was Hurt. Funny.

Paul told me how sick Abby was. Then he told me she was so sick but didn’t want to go to a doctor. You know how it is – and how none of us want to go ‘cuz she don’t have insurance. Thank you Bush…. So anyways a friend who is a scientist gave her some antibiotics. He said they were fish antibiotics! I was grossed out – he was a little freaked out too, so he called their friends and what he’d put her on was Amoxicillin, Ok well that’s like the same thing they give humans so I guess it’s OK.

So we get to her apartment and she shows us what she’s been taking.



Shut the Fuck up!!!! FISH MOX! Dude – she was totally on Fish Drugs. I couldn’t believe it.

Then I got another shock.

Abby - “So like, I’m not going.”

Me - “What.”

So after about twenty minutes of a mini argument (it wasn’t a fight) I’d convinced her to go – provided she was OK by 10 am the next morning. Fuck.

just before I left to go back to Pauls' - she showed me her Fire Poi really quick. She’d been learning. She flipped them around once or twice. She didn’t do anything super awesome – but she looked so perfect doing it.

That was the other part of my going out to Seattle. She was going to teach me to Fire Dance. We’d both had these crazy moments that made us want to learn. Hers was in Seattle, mine was in Greece – but I’ll save those stories for another day. At that point all I wanted to do was learn to spin during the remix of Capital G. I was so excited for everything, and now with Abby sick and in a funk…I was beginning to regret going out at all. I went back to Paul’s and went to sleep. By then I was nearly 98% sure Portland wasn’t happening.