(Around June 23rd)
Finally, the wellspring of infinite energy slowed to a trickle, last night, after Jay and I had rollerboarded sixty blocks to West Philadelphia, expending all our skate energy before National Get-Out and Skate Day™ (sponsored by Emerica™– So extreme, it’ll make you puke!).
“We used all our energy points getting out here,” Jay explained. “I feel that the past couple weeks has caught up to me. Tonight.”
He’s referring to our pregame summer, in which we have lived out three summers’ worth, even before crossing the equinox. Something had to give.
Speaking of infinite wellsprings, look over these photos of forty-odd superfriends, beseiging the Logan Circle fountain, after a Coughs and White Mice show at the SP Athenæum™.
( For those who want to play along at home, the alt-code for the trademark symbol is 0153)
This was the third night, on which, with our powers combined, we stopped the flow of the fountain.
Each superfriend grabbed their own fountainhead and plugged it with all their might. There is an mpeg somewhere
of the fountains slowing, but hell have me if I know exactly where. We dragged along a huge, blue 50X50 ft piece of canvas– the one used to cover our wrestling ring– to the fountain and sorted out some magic with that as well. Including harnessing and molesting the powerrful center spout, and weird coverings that gave form to power and brought the water to life. Water fountains fascinate me– even the little cascades found in malls and executive plazas. Water flow in general. The sight or sounds alone register as a tactile perception of flow, as if the water is flowing through me or something. The feeling has to stretch back a hundreds of thousands of years, to the time when rivers were everything. Maybe it means even more, though. Who knows.
In our last episode, Jonny, Jay, and I had rollerbladed to New York City, with hilarious consequences.
Not too long after, Jonny, Brian Morsberger and I made the attempt by bike, to make it to a Dearraindrop show at the Diesel Denim Gallery. My previous estimations put the trip at six hours or so, but nine hellacious hours later put us in Edison, New Jersey, and only an hour to get to the gallery. We took the train for six, almost seven, American dollars. That means all that for only three dollars, working out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 cents an hour for serious truckin. What a dirty scam.
The paysages were gorgeous though. We began the trek at midnight, first bogged down in the one way streets in North Philadelphia…. “Give me that bike!”… “Come back here! You dropped something!” Once we broke through, the streets got dark and smooth and weird. We crossed stretches of total downhill darkness, where I saw absolutely nothing and heard only wind. It was enought to make up for the steep uphills on a single gear, when I was slowed to a walking pace, sometimes forced to actually walk. We biked across a field, again with zero light, but filled with millions of fireflies. A galaxy of green L.E.D.s with the two bright red ones on bikes, flashing ahead of me.
Brian was our Jay– our gimp– this time around. His bike fell to shit; the bolts holding the crank arm fell off and consequently so did the crank arm (assuming “crank arm” is a real word). So he tied up the fucker with twine and made the rest of the way to New York (or Edison, whatever, this was not to prove anything. Only to make the distance). And, once landed, times were swell, met up with the Dearraindrop kids and others, and headed back to a little spot to watch our friends Usaisamonster play. New York City was not as disappointing as usual.
But short of maybe crawling to New York, I think I will never travel by any means but the Chiantown bus. Why would I? It is a positive pleasure to fork over ten dollars to ride the Dragon Express; deeply satisfying to the part of my psyche that loves a bargain– prefers a bargain even to the free or complimentary.
And Deitch™ put out a Dearraindrop book out, Off/On, with my “Addendum on the Seven Cities” in the back. You probably won’t see it, suckers, unless you’re shopping in Tokyo or New York, or living with me. So.
Summertime. I once wrote something that, looking back, captured it in its essence. I called it A Summer in Charlottesville, to Cure Various Aches and Ailments in the Human Heart, but it is universal enough, I suppose.
Maybe I should admit that in the summer, the procreative urge overcomes the creative urge, but I can’t. It may be true, but the vividness of summernights always gives rise to the best thoughts, including the thought:
“this will happen, people will understand this, until the end of history.” Nice to know that when we’re ninety, or dead and gone, kids will still be enjoying the summer as if they’ll live forever.
