***BIG SHOW ALERT***
Saturday, November 11, at PACE in Easthampton, MA, at 8 o'clock PM, I have the privilege of sharing the stage with the fine, dashing young men of Pesky J. Nixon. (www.peskyjnixon.com) This is a split bill, but I do believe that we both plan to invade each others' sets and collaborate, because we are all divas and cannot possibly stay out of the spotlight. Be there pour le big rock-show!
Visit www.pioneerarts.org for tickets, directions, and other information!
AND, as extra incentive to attend (as if you needed anything more than the presence of Pesky and I!), there just might be an EP of newly recorded songs available at bargain basement pricing! Some new songs? Old songs? You'll just have to show up to find out.
In other news... my 28th birthday was far superior to my 27th, seeing as I did not spend it in the hospital, coughing up blood. I got to spend it at open mic at PACE, surrounded by my friends. We had our customary Packard's pig-out. It was good.
It was, it was good. But I confess that my near-death experience from last year at this time seems to be looming over me. As I am not, and never really will be, fully recovered, I can't shake the feeling that it will happen again. The doctors tell me that it's really very unlikely. But then again, my weird health problems have always been unlikely.
I don't remember "falling back" last year. I think that I was unconscious- in the hospital unconscious, or going through life unconscious. I jumped right back into work, and life, avoiding all thoughts of the hospital, even as i went to radiation every day.
But now a whole year has passed, and winter is brewing again. As the leaves fall, I'm struck by all of the new beginnings happening around me. In less than 24 hours, two of my best friends in the whole world were married, and two other friends had a baby. And standing just outside those little circles of hope and love has actually been good for my state of mind.
This year, when the clocks turned backward, I was watching a DVD with a good friend who was staying with me for the weekend. We were curled up on the futon. She asked me about the first time I got sick. And I told the story, which I usually hate doing. But it was all right. Because it finally felt like a long time ago. It felt like something that happened to someone else. It was about 12:30 when we decided to go to bed. I wondered out loud if I should turn the clocks back that night or in the morning. "It's okay," she said, "You can do it now." And I reached over and turned it back. And it wasn't last year, it was just 11:30 again. I was still in my apartment, with my friend. Safe, and crazy as ever.
So here we have turned the heat on, and are bracing ourselves against the snow. We can only hold it off for so long. Or, actually, we can't. No one is in control of it. It's a weird kind of comfort, isn't it? I think so.
