Michael Levy: Invocation to Athena

Michael Levy is releasing yet another album of ancient music for the lyre, played on one of the most beautiful instruments ever created. Give it a listen!

From Michael:

I am delighted to announce that my new album, “Invocation to Athena”, is now available to pre-save on Spotify, ahead of its release across all the usual digital music platforms on 1st January, 2026:

https://open.spotify.com/prerelease/3XffBOVDbZuA3oVKzO2tQQ?si=cd82616c91734dee

This album features a series of mythological soundscapes, carved out of the ancient timbre of recreated  lyres & kithara, inspired from classical Greece. It is my sincere hope, that the listener will be transported on a 'musical adventure in time travel' through a tapestry of ancient Greek mythology…

The tracks feature both a selection of new, original pieces for recreated ancient lyres & kithara in the distinctive expressive qualities of the original ancient Greek Modes, as well as a completely re-recorded and remastered version of the track "The Apparations of Phantasos", originally  from my 2021 album, "Echoes of Ancient Greece" - the only piece of music that actually came to me in a dream! 

On the morning of 6th March, 2021, I woke up with this tune still in my head & before the trance-like dream-music evaporated back into the ethers, I grabbed my cell phone and used it to record the melodic outline which I sleepily hummed into the microphone. To bring the dream-music more closely back to how I experienced it, this new recording of the track is much more vividly mixed and mastered. It is performed here, with the rich, dark and deep timbre of my Luthieros ‘Lyre of Apollo III’.

January 2026 will be a particularly significant anniversary for me - marking 20 years since I was inspired to order and teach myself to play from scratch, my first ever 10-string lyre! To mark this anniversary, I decided to include in this new release, this very same lyre, with its distinctively dark, mysterious kithara-like timbre - it is featured in track 5, “The Dark Magic of Medea”.

Wishing you all a peaceful Christmas & a prosperous New Year.

Michael's Chronicles: Elevator Kid

Michael is on the road again, doing what he does and riding in elevators with strangers who aren't as strange as they could be.

Elevator kid November 19 

The elevator door opened on the third floor where I was staying this morning in Jacksonville. I hadn’t wanted to negotiate the staircase because my arms were loaded behind my coffee and I didn’t choose to spill it all over my fresh shirt. I mean, who rides downstairs anyway if he doesn’t have an excuse. A curly haired kid popped out. Three years old. Maybe four. All alone. The door lingered open. 

“You want company?” he said (or, I should say, declared) as he popped back in and pressed the close door button and then the one directing us to the ground floor. He stood back and flashed an ear-to-ear engaging smile. His next words were Deja vu. “What’s your name? I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” 

The comment took me back to maybe 1984 or perhaps ‘85. My daughter Sarah. Three or four years old, she then. Her mother, Laura, and I had instructed her on more than one occasion not to talk to strangers. But Sarah, bless her heart, was loquacious and gregarious. Not just one. Both. Not willing to have her nature stifled she had come up with the solution - a variant to that of Elevator Kid. She would ask, “Are you a stranger, because I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” 

Strange, huh? As I said, Deja vu. All over again, huh? So much for that. 

Back to Elevator Kid. Sorta white but with beautiful kinky hair. Mixed race. I had seen him upon my arrival last night burning endless energy chasing and screaming around the patio area with a band of similar aged minnows. All were of mixed race. Two white moms sat nearby at a table chatting and smoking and occasionally barking warnings at the kids, prime among which was “Stay away from the pool.” 

There was a reason for this. In the lobby while checking in I had read a sign, eight by ten in bold font (perhaps Almie), declaring “POOL AND HOT TUB TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR SERVICING. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE” The sign had been posted, no doubt, at least three years prior. Witness, the pool - large and deep - was caked with mud and leaves and hadn’t contained water in recent memory. Ditto the hot tub. To have fallen in possessed no threat so gentle as drowning. Life and limb were at peril. Amazingly, no fence or rope barrier had been installed to ward off the inattentive. This was a lawsuit begging for its moment. The kids played on with dispassionate disinterest, mom’s periodic admonitions notwithstanding. White noise….. Now I was in the elevator with one of those kids. 

To him the elevator was akin to a carnival ride. I completely got it. As a kid of his age, I frequently rode up and down the escalators at the local Sears and Roebuck. We stayed away from the elevator because the stern-mannered operator of same didn’t view his responsibilities as including those of providing recreational opportunities for unsupervised kids. May as well have been a palace guard. 

“Is that a computer?” the kid said, pointing at my shaving kit. “No,” I responded not knowing how to elaborate on the topic to a tyke of that vintage. 

“What’s your name?” he next asked. 

“Michael.” 

“Why?” he said. 

Who on earth, I thought, asks why you are named as you are? “My mother liked that name.” 

“Oh.” The elevator stopped and he ran out, trailing off his last comment: “Bye.” 

Yeah. “Bye to you too,” I thought but not voicing it. He was gone with the wind. He hadn’t talked to a stranger. Nor had I.

Michael's Chronicles: Be Who You Are

To quote the old Motown song, You can do what you want to do/But be who you are . . .

Take some advice from Michael, who has had A LOT of things go wrong on the road, and has had a lot of people try to get him to compromise, or take the blame when he shouldn't, or help them with unworthy shenanigans.

Be who you are 

Use what you have 

Do what you can 

And be kind 

You have nothing to lose 

Be grounded 

Be principled 

Be honest 

Know who you are 

Be an example 

The world may go nuts 

As it does from time to time

Don’t go along for the ride 

You have better things to do

Things that need your best 

Don’t be distracted 

Be a witness to truth 

Not a purveyor of rumor 

Stay clear and grounded 

Walk upright, chin to the wind 

Seek the long view 

Listen to those that ask 

Good questions 

Be wary of those 

Who have all the answers 

Never stop searching 

And least not of all 

Look inward 

Long before you blame others

When things don’t go as expected 

Have a good laugh 

And move on 

Michael's Chronicles: On the Road Again

Michael's on the road again, which I guess is kind of a redundant report, because he's there for most of the year. I guess the motels can run together after a while, but at least there are weird dreams.

Another Motel 

July 20 

I’m not trying to sleep 

I am sleeping 

So I don’t care If the train goes by 

He can be part of my dream 

Quacky ducks and geese 

Grass and a pond 

On both sides of the track 

I am a witness 

Watching from my dream 

The engine first, then the cars 

Ka clacketa clack 

Ka clacketa clack 

They’ve seen it all before 

They’re watching me in my dream 

I hop on my carpet 

And fly above them 

I need no wings 

I am free and floating 

My dream has set me there 

The train’s whistle 

Toots through the night 

Across my mind 

Taking my imagination 

For a little cruise 

Who will I meet? 

What will I find? 

I am open you know 

Always open always moving 

Traveling the dreamscape 

The birds ask me 

How they ended up in my dream 

I tell them I don’t talk to birds 

Ask the train, ask him 

I am but a traveler dreaming my night away

Michael Levy: Enchantment of the Tortoise Lyre

I post a lot of musings from my brother Michael, but there's another Michael who appears here: Michael Levy. Michael Thiele makes hardwood music, but Michael Levy plays the ancient lyre, and he has a new album coming out. Read his announcement below. (The image above is not from his album, but I was trying to find something in the "ancient" theme.)

From Michael Levy:

I thought I would like to share with you the creative process behind the completion of my new album, “Enchantment of the Tortoise Lyre” - available now, from all the usual digital music platforms & available to directly download from my website, with lossless audio available from Bandcamp!

In developing my ideas for a new recording project, I usually first conjure up either a specific tune or a spontaneous improvisation for my lyres to quite quickly arrange & record … then spend sometimes months trying to think of some mythologically-based title to add the most amount of meaning to the feeling of each of these tunes (then spend years dealing with comments on YouTube from brain-dead 'fundamentalist religious types', who not being able to separate fact from aesthetic fiction & not being able to resist imposing their moronic mind-set on everyone else, think my music, all of which is just an evocation of ancient historical aesthetic fiction, is literal 'Hymns of Homage' to 'evil' pantheons of pagan gods'!!).

Despite this fact, in this particular project, I almost began to think that track 8, “The Hex of Hecate”, was literally ‘hexed by Hecate’, the terrifying three-headed ancient Greek goddess of magic! I realized a few days before the album was released, that I had uploaded the 'wrong' version of the final master!! Although pretty much nobody but myself can tell the difference between a few reverb overlays etc., this is just frankly too much for my 'nerdy/bordering on psychotic perfectionism to bear...

I then had to spend a small fortune on my cell phone from the UK to the USA to CD Baby, who distributes my music, to arrange to re-upload the ‘correct’ audio for the track…only for them to email me the next day, to say that the hyperlink I provided to the audio file did not work!!

I then had to try & use Dropbox to send the audio, which I had not used for over a decade & spent hours until the late hours attempting to get it to get my track across the Atlantic & across the continent of the USA from East coast to West coast, to the CD Baby offices in Portland, Oregon.

The corrected track finally arrived - but a day too late as the album had just been released!!

I then had to wait almost a week have to wait an infernal week, before the 'correct' audio master had finally replaced the 'subtely incorrect' one (which had by then, had gone out to about 50 digital music platforms!).

To hear the subtle differences between the audio I intended and the ‘incorrect’ version I spent so long attempting to rectify, compare the now thankfully corrected track on Spotify to the original incorrect version of the track which featured on my YouTube presentation of it, before I realized that this was the ‘wrong’ version! 

Michael's Chronicles: Life

Life has been tough lately for a lot of people in a lot of places. I've been thinking about that a lot, and about how to cope with the stress and the anxiety. Should I try to live in the present? That seems like a good idea, but I think Michael is right about persistence. Sometimes you keep going because you just keep going. Good thing Michael likes his work so much.

Life

Life is far more about
Persistence 
Than ever it could hope 
To be about age

No life is fully experienced
Without passion
Comfort and wealth are sweet
But not at the expense of passion

I have met many job holders 
Good at what they do
Retirement bound with eggs in their baskets
But no one retires from passion

Material reward as an end
Delivers only myopia
Job holders are no match for enthusiasts
So enjoy the trees but SEE the forest

And what of love?
It is the language without words
Let me die broke or young

But please, let me die in love 

Michael's Chronicles" The Lamp

The erotic sentiments towards lamps expressed by my bother Michael in the following post are not necessarily the sentiments of the establishment (me) running this blog. But they're not NOT necessarily the sentiments, either, I mean  . . . lamps, you know? What's not to sigh over?

The Lamp

The lamp on my nightstand is downright erotic. I confess I have spent way too much time staring at it while lying in bed at night. No, I’m not a lampophile and I don’t touch myself inappropriately while looking at it, although……….

If the thing we’re sitting in the produce section of the grocery store I might actually stop a stranger walking by and say, “Look at that thing.” There’s no doubt I would buy or shoplift it (only if the sign said, “NOT FOR SALE,” emphatically - in capital letters.)

What sadist would post such a sign in front of this object knowing the effect it was going to have on people? I can just feel the beady eyes of the produce manager as he’s watching me loiter around the damn thing and reaching out to fondle it. He’s a wacko for sure, a lamp voyeur. I touch it anyway and close my eyes. 

Its texture is smooth. Too smooth. Alluringly so. I hear a little girl saying, “Mommy, look what that man’s doing. Why are his eyes closed?” The mom responds, “Let’s move along, honey. It’s not polite to stare.” Under her breath I hear the word, “Pervert.”

Truth be told, she’s secretly jealous. She’s no doubt going to return later without her daughter to touch it herself. If I have anything to say about it, it won’t be here.

As you can see, its curvaceous body is brown (my favorite color) like milk chocolate. The stem at the top is sorta the shape of that of an Acorn Squash only more beautiful. Its ridges and top are skin pink. In between the ridges there is a pretty strong hint of brown again. The stem is also quite smooth. I am tempted to grab the lamp by it and run, but sanity prevails in the moment. If I do it, for sure store security will ruin my day.

I reach for the lamp shade. It is the perfect choice for my ceramic girlfriend - translucent and textured like leather. I don’t care for jerky but I think I could chew on this shade for a while. Just not in public. People might not understand. I might get hauled off and fitted for a straitjacket.

I never dreamed I’d be writing about a lamp. It’s risky. But if one is going to be dominated by a fetish there are worse things than this. At least it’s not a rubber duck with devil horns. Think I’ll turn it off and catch some sleep. ZZZZZZZZZZ…….

Michael's Chronicles: Travel

Having done a bit of travel with Michael Myself, I can tell you that hotel SNAFUs are par for the course. In fact, when I started reading this account, I wondered if it was one of the hotels we visited on a recent trip. It wasn't, but I'm guessing there are a million of 'em.

Travel . . .

Travel is my life. It’s what I do. My sixteen year old Ford extended van has now traversed over 439,000 miles around the country hauling me to art festivals and gathering unusual and rare woods for my instruments. I’m still on the original engine, knock on wood (yuk, yuk…..get it?). I’m not the Michael Thiele of forty years ago when I, like a lot of my artist friends, slept in my ride. For a very long time, now, I’ve splurged for a motel room at the end of the day. This is of particular necessity when I’m exhibiting at a show. Art enthusiasts are quite interested in meeting and chatting with the creators of the works they came to view and, hopefully, purchase. They are decidedly less interested in smelling any particular artist’s body odor. Can’t say that I blame them.

 

I’ve spent, quite literally, thousands of nights in motel rooms over the course of my career and thus have experienced the full gamut of what the hospitality industry has to offer. The vast majority of my stays have lacked any noteworthiness whatever. They lie at the center of the proverbial bell curve. The two ends - the really good stays and the sketchy ones - are the ones that adhere to my memory, and primarily the latter.

 

Last fall, on my trip to Philadelphia for the Rose Squared event, I had made a reservation in Memphis at a property I’d never visited. It was the Red Roof Inn at the Memphis airport. A budget motel, to be sure, I’ve stayed at a lot of these over the years because they are almost always pretty good and dependably quieter than other budget properties. 

 

Let me preface what I am about to recount. It had been about a fourteen hour driving day and had I arrived at almost any earlier time than midnight I would have taken one look and moved on. The one redeeming feature of this stay was the presence of the two signs I encountered in the lobby, shown here. I am not ethnocentric by any stretch of the imagination, but I couldn’t stop laughing at the struggle the obviously non - American born author of these notices was having with the language. I photographed them knowing they had to be shared.

 

The front counter denizen, a young unkempt fellow with a cigarette cantilevering out from his lips (even though a nearby sign proclaimed this to be a non-smoking facility) took my information and my payment and gave me instructions for clearing the security gate along the fence surrounding the property. Security fence. Heavy duty - wrought iron or maybe steel tubing. I looked up at the building. Two floors. Unwelcoming. Obviously neglected for years. Heavy water stains of condensation emanating from each wall mounted air conditioning unit, brown and wide over the faded white paint applied in some distant past year. All this was easily visible because of the Klieg-like security lights pointed directly at the rooms. Perhaps the curtains would be of the light cancelling sort. 

 

I entered my room, took one look, and headed immediately back to the office to announce that I had changed my mind after seeing the room and to request a refund. The desk clerk had barely opened his mouth to respond when a much older guy popped through a door at the rear of the office and pretty much demanded that I tell him what was wrong with the room because there would be no refund. I described what I had seen. Recently painted, the room had no furniture save the bed which had not been replaced during the current century. Unsleepable. No light fixtures of any description had been re-installed since the painting had been done. The one light even present was an uncovered incandescent ceiling light in the bathroom. There was no toilet paper and no towels. No shower curtain. Perhaps this was their stripped down “economy” room. It was quite suitable, to be fair, for a blind occupant who could hold his bowels for eight hours at a time and didn’t need a shower. I was none of the above.

 

The old guy relented a bit over the condition of the room, cursing under his breath about the remodeling crew who, he claimed, the owner had hired off the street because he is a cheapskate. Just what I needed to hear at now almost one in the morning. Still, he said, there would be no refund, but he could put me in another room that was for sure complete.

 

The only item I’d taken with me into the original room was my shaving kit which I’d left on the bed alongside the plastic room key. I told him I needed to get back in to get the shaving kit but had locked the key in there inadvertently. What came next is the God’s honest truth. I swear it. The old guy said that there would be a two dollar “extra key” fee for replacements. I dropped my jaw. The key wasn’t lost, and I was not staying in that room. Just needed to retrieve the shaving kit. He directed my eyes to a sign on the bullet proof window behind which he stood proclaiming the key policy. Said he didn’t make the rules. I became agitated, which he tolerated for a short time before angrily extracting two bucks from his wallet, shoving it in the register and proclaiming, “There, I pay it for you. But only this once. Next time……..”

 

He let me in to get my kit and then led me to the replacement room, not good but functional. I left at six a.m. for another long day’s drive toward Philly. The show was good. The next Red Roof Inn was excellent and thus not memorable. As bad as the Memphis experience was, if I hadn’t been there life would have less contrast to muse about. There is a reason that every coin has two sides. Thankfully.

 

 

Michael's Chronicles: Fried Spuzzles

When Ernie and I travel with Michael on our yearly road trip, we stop at Fast food joints sometimes, usually getting the chicken Something, which is the healthiest choice we can make under the circumstances. I'm sure he's stopped at a lot of Carl's Jr.s on the road between art shows, too. So when he talks about the fast food spiel, he's speaking from long experience -- you can count on it.

Fried Spuzzles

Within certain realms in life there is an “edge” toward which one can be pushed over time. One doesn’t arrive there spontaneously or as the result of some single encounter but rather as the result of an aggregate of constant nudges. One night, with a carload of teens at a Jack In The Box in Sunnyslope, Arizona, I had reached that edge. A lot of food was going to be ordered through their miserable little speaker system and things - as they commonly do at the drive thru - we’re going to go distinctly south. Again. Nothing had yet occurred as I drove up to the order box but the very act of being there had managed to inflict that last tiny insult upon that small minded little alter ego inside my cranium and I was suddenly no longer in control of normal conversational skills. I realized somewhere within that I had no idea what I was going to say to the young lady inside the speaker box. I had reached the proverbial edge out of seemingly thin air.

To be fair, the order girl, no doubt wearing a headset of some sort, had not yet uttered a word at me and was no doubt near exhaustion late at night after a likely long shift. But someone was going to have to pay for earlier encounters that had occurred far too frequently at fast food joints. She just happened to be the someone.

I am not a vengeful person. I don’t get mad, and I don’t get even. I’m not some power crazed orange haired clown posing as a president. So, let’s just say that from time to time I put things “into balance.” I am “responsive” to past injustices. Fast food order takers have been guilty of a particular type of injustice over the years. The conversation goes something like this:

“Welcome to (you name it), would you like to try our special roasted something or other tonight?”

“No.”

“Then what can I get you?”

“I would like to order your grilled chicken sandwich. Not the meal, no drink. Just the sandwich and nothing else.”

“Would you like to upsize that, sir?”

“Upsize what?”

“The meal. You can supersize it for only an extra dollar twenty nine.”

Me: Silence.

“Sir………?”

“I’m here.”

“What size do you want your meal?”

“I told you I didn’t want the meal. Just the sandwich.

“Okay. What size drink?”

Me: Silence.

“Sir………..?”

“I told you I didn’t want a drink. Just the sandwich.”

Pause, I presume for thought. “Okay, that’ll be something, something, whatty what at the window.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve been put through this conversation. I never order the meal. Never. But I can say that the person at the other end of the order box more often than not takes me through the dog and pony show. Tonight, someone was going to pay.


The kids in the car were not given the opportunity to tell me what to order for them. They sat speechless as I launched into my spiel.

“I would like four orders of the fried spuzzles. You can supersize all four. Are they still on special?”

“Did you say puzzles, sir? We don’t sell those here although they used to come with the kid meal. But they were small. You talking about those?”

“No. I’m talking about the fried spuzzles you’ve had on special for the last month. They’re great. Are they still on sale?”

“Did you say spuzzles?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you spell that? I’ve never heard of it.”

“S…p…u…z…z…l…e…s.”

Silence toward me, but a few words with someone in the background.

Finally, “Sir, maybe you got those somewhere else. We don’t have anything by that name. What are they made out of?”

“How would I know? They just taste great. And don’t tell me you never heard of them. You’re advertising them on that billboard at 7th and Missouri.”

Not knowing where else to go with this she began reading me the menu:

“Hamburger, Cheeseburger, barbequed this, Sourdough that, to all of which I repeatedly said, “No.” she moved away from her station abruptly and her voice was replaced by that of an irritated man.

“Sir, if you want to order something real, do it. It’s been a long day, and this young lady doesn’t get paid enough for you to mess with her.”

“Fine. I’ll take my business elsewhere.” We left and went down the street to the Carl’s Jr, where the kids finally got to order real meals. They talked about the Jack In The Box caper for weeks afterward, though I can’t recall ever telling them why I’d done it.

Since my bypass surgery I rarely eat fast food and, to be honest, hadn’t been going to such restaurants very often anyway. I can’t call the incident cathartic in any meaningful way but, for my money, it did have the effect of righting some series of wrongs. I like to think I’m being heard. Perhaps fast food joints aren’t designed for that. How would I know? I just want some fried spuzzles. Supersized, please.

 

 

Michael's Chronicles: Laney

Mostly Michael writes about stuff that happens between art shows, but occasionally some fiction comes bubbling up from his subconscious, vignettes inspired by life on the road and life in general. Hey, he can't spend all of his time making drum boxes and peddling them all over the country. Sometimes the self expression takes a different form.

Laney

She was a hair twirler. Index finger and thumb. Sometimes the middle one too. It was one of those absent minded habits. Better than nose picking or knuckle cracking - the kinds of things guys do. But habit, nonetheless. And it caught his attention.

She felt his gaze before she caught it in her eye.

“Are you staring at me?” Her mother had always encouraged her to be direct.

“Well, no, actually. I’m watching you.”

“Watching me what?”

“Twirling your beautiful hair.”

She turned up her nose and looked away dismissively.

“You asked.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Do I call you “Twirly” or do you go by something else?”

The voice in her head said, “Who is this guy? Who does he think he is?”

“I can live with “Twirly.”

“That’s not my name and you know it.”

“Throw me a bone then. What do your friends call you? Got any of those?”

It had been three days since she broke up with Jimmy - well, technically, two and a half and she’d sworn off relationships forever. She’d made an agreement with herself and she wasn’t going to break it just like that. 

“Been working on your pickup lines, huh?”

“Sure have. Started with dogs and gerbils. They follow me everywhere I go now.”

She looked around.

“Don’t see any gerbils.”

He furrowed his brow, leaned forward and cupped one corner of his mouth squeezing out a whisper as though it were some sort of state secret. 

“Dogs ate em.”

She cocked her head sideways and squinched out a look of fake disbelief, then looked around once again.

“Don’t see any dogs.”

“Close your eyes.”

“Wha…….why?”

“Just do it.” Slowly, she complied.

“ Woof……………………woof.”

She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed with a guy. Thoughts of Jimmy began to percolate up from somewhere inside but were quickly dashed by a question: “Who’s Jimmy?” She opened her eyes. He was smirking. Not smiling. Smirking.

“Okay, it’s Laney. Laney Harper. How about you? You got a name?”

 

Michael's Chronicles: Snowme

Michael lives in Flagstaff, a high altitude place the he loves because it's got mountains (in fact, it's got volcanoes), but there's a price to pay for that real estate. No wonder he would rather be on the road most of the time . . .

Snowme
March 14

Let me make a disclaimer here, paragon of truth that I am. I am not a malcontent. There are plenty of things in my life that please me no end. Snow simply is not one of them. Trouble is, I live in snow country. Seven thousand feet off of sea level in the direction of the universe to be precise. There’s a reason there are no palm trees here. They don’t like snow either. See? I’m not alone. And we’re not the only ones. What about citrus and rubber plants? Oh, yeah, and throw in Venus fly traps for good measure. Getting my drift?

So when they call it God’s country it sets me to wondering just what god they’re referring to. Boreas was the Greek god of winter and ice, as well as the God of the north wind. In ancient art, he was depicted as an elderly man or a strong, bearded man with ice in his hair. Not my kind of guy. I don’t even like his name. If I saw him walking down the road I might run over him with my car. Johnny Nash got it right in his song, I Can See Clearly Now, when he said “gonna be a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day.”

But for me, even bright sun isn’t enough. I gotta have warmth. I mean, if the Good Lord had wanted us to worship the cold so much don’t you think he’d have lined the birth canal with ice, and we’d have all slid out with popsicle sticks for legs? News flash: he didn’t. 

By the way, have you ever looked at snowshoes? Who had the audacity to call those things footwear? Oversized tennis rackets or trout nets if you ask me. But don’t go out on this day in your Buster Browns or your Keds. The drifts that fell outside last night will eat your feet alive. Can’t a man just walk around without having to pull on fleece lined boots? If I spent the money on those things I won’t be able to feed my turtle (who, by the way, doesn’t like snow any more than I do) for six months. What do I write on his gravestone? “Paid the ultimate price for snow boots?” Hope the ASPCA doesn’t hear about me.

Fortunately I don’t have to shovel the junk. I can just have son, Joah, do it and listen to him bitch and moan about it for the rest of the day. It’s worth it. Perhaps he could shovel some heat into the air while he’s at it. I’m ready for my lawn chair and sandals. Am I the only one?

Michael's Chronicles: Dawn

This is not one of those On the Road musings. There are multiple hints in this one that Michael is at home -- so to speak. He's in his woodshop, making more stuff. Hooray for stuff!

Dawn

Dawn is approaching
Just east of my ridge
This morning I don’t really care
I’m snug as a bug
In my studio bed
Not planning to go anywhere

Early is good
It’s peaceful and sane
With no other bodies around
But I’m thinking right now
And I don’t want to move
I don’t need my feet on the ground

There’s plenty of time
For industrious work
For forming the shapes into sound
For cutting and fitting
And gluing, of course
And hoping for something profound 

I’ll soon feel the urge 
To get out of this space
To abandon the dawning’s sweet quiet
But not in this moment
I’m far to content
I can’t even make myself try it

Michael's Chronicles: Dumb Dream

To recap earlier episodes of The Chronicles, Michael is still on the road selling drum boxes, is still recovering from Heart Surgery, and is still missing his sense of taste (which must be very annoying). To cap this off, he's having dumb dreams, but I admire the fact that he has the energy to wake up from those dreams and write them down before rolling over and going to sleep again. That's more than I can say. 

Thursday, Feb 6
Dumb Dream

You’d think I could catch a break. I was sleeping so peacefully tonight when I found myself on a transatlantic flight to a country I’d never heard of on one of those megaliners with about eighteen seats across. The first thing I saw was that the overhead screens were showing a game involving black ants playing soccer. I don’t care for soccer. Don’t play the game and have no earthly idea what they’re up to.

Soccer fan doesn’t care. He (she) goes nuts watching it and can become extremely animated. Problem one: ants are playing - not humans. Black ones. Problem two: none of the ants is wearing a uniform so how people are rooting for a “team” is a mystery to me, but all these people are going nuts cheering anyway. Problem three: ants, even big ones, are notoriously small. They can’t really kick anything around. I guess the upside is that they’ll never get a foul for using their hands because they have none. Who cares?

So the ants have limited choices. They seem to surround the ball in huge numbers and are carrying it forward while the opposing team is amassing twigs and other shit down field in front of them to create impediments to forward movement. Passengers on this flight, mostly from Somethingvakia are all cheering. Still can’t figure out why. Thankfully at last there is a break in the action. The overhead lights come on and carts begin rolling around with what I assume to be refreshments.

Something is wrong, I can tell almost immediately. Flight attendants normally dress in company uniforms so they can be distinguished as legit and official. Not these ones. No, not these ones. These ones are dressed randomly as if having been selected from among the passengers themselves. I spot a guy in a business suit with a tie that keeps dipping into the pitcher of what he is serving. (I find myself disturbed by this but no one else seems at all daunted.) Incidentally, any variety of beverage is offered on any normal flight - coffee, water, juice, soda - even booze. The pitcher into which this guy’s tie is dipping is filled with prune juice. It is the one and only drink available on this particular flight. Tie flavored prune juice.

There is a girl in a tennis outfit pushing his cart, smiling all the time but saying nothing to anyone. The second cart is piled with what looks like bite sized chunks of brightly colored lava biscuits. It is piloted by a kid with a very runny nose and the server is a nurse wearing a baseball cap, canted sideways with the bill folded up. At this point I begin to think I must be having someone else’s dream. I’d like to find him and give it back.

The guy next to me reaches out to receive a rose colored lava chip but before he takes a bite he examines it closely, turns to me and asks me in a language I don’t know yet clearly understand if I think the thing will taste good. I tell him I don’t know because I recently had open heart surgery and thus nothing tastes right. I do, however, advise him not to bite it because it is made of rock. Yes, he says, but do I think it will taste good. No, I offer. It is not digestible. He bites it anyway, despite my good Samaritan advise, and I hear teeth disintegrating. I am nonplussed by this but what can I say? Then all hell breaks loose.

The flight attendants suddenly move aside to allow the onrush of some sort of air cops. Multicolored lights begin flashing as though we are in a casino and someone has just won big at a slot machine. They stop at my aisle and point at a lady wearing a Carmen Miranda looking hat with fake fruit all over it. In the unknown language they say in absolute unison, “you’ve been drinking.” The other passengers begin hissing and the poor woman turns beet red with embarrassment. She is summoned to the aisle and informed that she can either endure a breathalyzer test or a mobile chest X-ray. Bewildered, she chooses the latter.

Hell comes in degrees. Hell, Hellier and Helliest. What transpires next is the last and obviously most profound of the three. The largest of the four cops - a male - slips his hands under her blouse and moves them up to cover her breasts. She is so shocked by this that she exhales suddenly and vehemently. The other three officers lean forward to smell her breath. The look at each other and around at the surrounding passengers and proclaim, “Nope, she’s not drunk.” Relieved, she matter of factly pushes the officer’s hands off her chest (which have by this time been lingering for no justifiable reason) and matter of factly returns to her seat. 

The lights dim once again, the cops and flight attendants fade away and the ant soccer game returns to the overhead screens. Once again we’ve returned to normalcy. Soccer fan is going nuts. The guy next to me is staring into his left hand examining a few broken teeth. I lean over. “I told you that was a bad idea.”

I need to locate the guy whose dream this is and return it. I’d rather dream about motorized pomegranates on a go cart track or watch ticks playing baseball. Think I’ll try to get back to sleepThursday, Feb 6

Dumb Dream

You’d think I could catch a break. I was sleeping so peacefully tonight when I found myself on a transatlantic flight to a country I’d never heard of on one of those megaliners with about eighteen seats across. The first thing I saw was that the overhead screens were showing a game involving black ants playing soccer. I don’t care for soccer. Don’t play the game and have no earthly idea what they’re up to.

Soccer fan doesn’t care. He (she) goes nuts watching it and can become extremely animated. Problem one: ants are playing - not humans. Black ones. Problem two: none of the ants is wearing a uniform so how people are rooting for a “team” is a mystery to me, but all these people are going nuts cheering anyway. Problem three: ants, even big ones, are notoriously small. They can’t really kick anything around. I guess the upside is that they’ll never get a foul for using their hands because they have none. Who cares?

So the ants have limited choices. They seem to surround the ball in huge numbers and are carrying it forward while the opposing team is amassing twigs and other shit down field in front of them to create impediments to forward movement. Passengers on this flight, mostly from Somethingvakia are all cheering. Still can’t figure out why. Thankfully at last there is a break in the action. The overhead lights come on and carts begin rolling around with what I assume to be refreshments.

Something is wrong, I can tell almost immediately. Flight attendants normally dress in company uniforms so they can be distinguished as legit and official. Not these ones. No, not these ones. These ones are dressed randomly as if having been selected from among the passengers themselves. I spot a guy in a business suit with a tie that keeps dipping into the pitcher of what he is serving. (I find myself disturbed by this but no one else seems at all daunted.) Incidentally, any variety of beverage is offered on any normal flight - coffee, water, juice, soda - even booze. The pitcher into which this guy’s tie is dipping is filled with prune juice. It is the one and only drink available on this particular flight. Tie flavored prune juice.

There is a girl in a tennis outfit pushing his cart, smiling all the time but saying nothing to anyone. The second cart is piled with what looks like bite sized chunks of brightly colored lava biscuits. It is piloted by a kid with a very runny nose and the server is a nurse wearing a baseball cap, canted sideways with the bill folded up. At this point I begin to think I must be having someone else’s dream. I’d like to find him and give it back.

The guy next to me reaches out to receive a rose colored lava chip but before he takes a bite he examines it closely, turns to me and asks me in a language I don’t know yet clearly understand if I think the thing will taste good. I tell him I don’t know because I recently had open heart surgery and thus nothing tastes right. I do, however, advise him not to bite it because it is made of rock. Yes, he says, but do I think it will taste good. No, I offer. It is not digestible. He bites it anyway, despite my good Samaritan advise, and I hear teeth disintegrating. I am nonplussed by this but what can I say? Then all hell breaks loose.

The flight attendants suddenly move aside to allow the onrush of some sort of air cops. Multicolored lights begin flashing as though we are in a casino and someone has just won big at a slot machine. They stop at my aisle and point at a lady wearing a Carmen Miranda looking hat with fake fruit all over it. In the unknown language they say in absolute unison, “you’ve been drinking.” The other passengers begin hissing and the poor woman turns beet red with embarrassment. She is summoned to the aisle and informed that she can either endure a breathalyzer test or a mobile chest X-ray. Bewildered, she chooses the latter.

Hell comes in degrees. Hell, Hellier and Helliest. What transpires next is the last and obviously most profound of the three. The largest of the four cops - a male - slips his hands under her blouse and moves them up to cover her breasts. She is so shocked by this that she exhales suddenly and vehemently. The other three officers lean forward to smell her breath. The look at each other and around at the surrounding passengers and proclaim, “Nope, she’s not drunk.” Relieved, she matter of factly pushes the officer’s hands off her chest (which have by this time been lingering for no justifiable reason) and matter of factly returns to her seat. 

The lights dim once again, the cops and flight attendants fade away and the ant soccer game returns to the overhead screens. Once again we’ve returned to normalcy. Soccer fan is going nuts. The guy next to me is staring into his left hand examining a few broken teeth. I lean over. “I told you that was a bad idea.”

I need to locate the guy whose dream this is and return it. I’d rather dream about motorized pomegranates on a go cart track or watch ticks playing baseball. Think I’ll try to get back to sleep.