Jun. 22, 2004 - 9:24
oh my god diaryland let me in to add an entry. this is monumental. they've been chapping my hide lately.
So the latest is that matt & I are
gearing up for Desc's visit to nyc & our mini-tour with them next week. we still need to rent a car and figure out how they're going to have equipment after we leave them in north carolina and i dropped off laundry today because we don't have enough clean towels and i want to cook for them cause it's hard to travel a long way for home and they're going to be poor just like matt & i are every time we take one foot off of the island of manhattan.
my aunt josephine is really sick. she has bone cancer. josephine is technically my stepmom gloria's sister and you're probably thinking so she's related to me how? she's not technically. But I have always felt a strong connection to her. Almost 10 years ago when sharky and I drove across the country we stopped for a few days and spent time with she and her partner curtis. they lived outside of Tuscon, Arizona in the desert with their two beautiful shepherd dogs. Josephine is a painter and a poet. curtis had recently built her a studio---it was kind of an artist's paradise there watching the sunset and reading poetry and being surrounded by her paintings. of course josephine had to work crap jobs to pay the rent and curtis is a truck driver! but spending time at their place was all about making art and what inspires you and talking late into the nite. She made quite an impact on me when i was 21. I didn't know what it was like to have to work for a living (fresh out of college), and how to get through the ups and downs of survival so you could still focus on the creative life. She was a great example of that---she was in her 50's at the time and unjaded and taking classes and publishing her poetry and doing things (she recently started playing the cello). She gave me a sense of possibility & hope--think that is what i'm trying to say. That you could make your life how you want it.
me and christine could barely play guitar in front of two people all those years ago and she told us to practice while she painted and to play songs for her and so we did.
I am mailing her a package of cds today...bfinger, me solo, schwervon.....
I think she will be surprised.
And yet not.
it's cloudy today but I can definitely see the orangey red desert sunset.
