Glorious Bacon and a Lightsaber.

Days, weeks, months... Everything goes barrelling along, faster than I know how to manage.

Last weekend I performed one of the work songs I've been working on (more like marinating) for well over a year now. It was a deep plunge into a bursting place, kind of like suddenly sprinting for three miles when all you've been doing is ambling along. Lots of good feedback, but yet I'm still lacking a few key insights into the nature of the thing. It's a matter of courage right now, I think.

Passed through Moscow, Idaho, on the way to British Columbia last week. The highway runs through this beautiful rolling region of hillocks and ridglets, scooped and scalloped like sculpted soap bars, festively adorned with the ocassional decorative cow. A few millenia ago, some busy old glaciers swept past the region and left this rolling loveliness everywhere.

I stayed with my good friend Sally in Moscow, and ate tons and tons of delicious food; there was this dish called the Barbecue Chicken Coalition, and that, my friends, is what it takes to inspire a real Coalition of the Willing. Much laughter and plotting. She lives with four cats and a prize-winning playwright, in a fairy-tale corner of Idaho where the co-op is staffed with legions of nubile young things. How can you not look north with envy?

And then Canada with my cousins, performing in an opulent cultural center, tons and tons more food. There's this diner in North Vancouver called the Tomahawk (it's only mildly offensive), where they serve this legendary breakfast special called The Yukon Platter, which is heaps and heaps of old-style Canadian Bacon, a couple of vast eggs and diced hash browns on toast. Just staring at this staggering concentration of greasy goodness makes all the cares in the world seem frivolous and inconsequential, even as your soul and your arteries eagerly contort and harden in anticipation. You consume the plate and then you sleep for a couple of hours while your metabolism compensates for the sudden overabundance of bacon in the system. Then you wake up groggy and punchy, and the mere mention of food curdles your intestines.

My cousin gave me a lightsaber for an early birthday present. It's this gloriously extravagant costume piece that lights up and makes those wonderful sound effects. It comes with its own mounting stand. My cousin and I, we're such dorks. Somehow I managed to get this thing past customs, don't ask me how.

T-nine days to My Birthday Festivities. On Paul's Wish List:

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Peace On Earth
An Antique Pickaxe (or Sledgehammer)
A Utilikilt
A Gerber
Financial Security
A College Education
Universal Health Care
Plane Tickets to London
Interesting Stamps from Foreign Countries
True Love
Time
Another Lightsaber

best,

paulmonster-palouse