to resume:
ilana drove the entire way up and back to/from the festival site in hillsdale, ny. farmer joe owns a gorgeous plot of land in the catskills and lends it out every summer to the hippies. i think it’s right commendable of him.
we had our own mini-music-festival in the car, singing and cding our way up the increasingly lovely mountain roads. we set up our tent, a borrowed a-frame none of us really knew how to use, and which liz ultimately figured out, in what we later learned was the social area. to our right, a group of kids our age seemed content to smoke pot starting at 9 in the morning and never leave their campsite. across from us and down were three boys that initially we could only see from afar, one of whom was wearing a shirt that looked like it said, in symbols, “i love cock.” liz went over to ask them for weed and when they returned w/ her we saw that the last symbol was a cat, not a rooster. (ohhhhh …) they may have been sexist but they were generous w/ their bowl. everyone in fact was lovely. that’s the folk-festival atmosphere.
after that, we met the 40 year olds: more neighbors who latched onto us i think to feel involved (the woman kept insisting her job was “uncool”). they shared a bottle of california wine and talked nearly non-stop.
and then daniel, a 16 year old (looked much older) long-haired free-spirit of the purest kind, who lost his wallet w/ $150 in it and threw up his hands and called it “karma.” he was very folksinger-savvy and he loved women: while he lamented that tho he missed his faraway girlfriend yada, he couldn’t keep from hooking up w/ others and he demonstrated his good taste by confessing to want a piece of ilana.
mostly, tho, the three of us spent time by ourselves. we talked a lot, we enthused over the same music, we people watched and we went to bed at the same time. one morning, liz made a hemp spin for ilana’s hair while i read portions of Tom Jones out loud. it felt really comfortable, really home-y.
ran into jonah on saturday so he chilled w/ us for a while. he had read this site (!!) and so knew that we’d be at falconridge at the same time that he was in the area. so that was cool and i got a report on the barn (kids: it’s doing fine). as he was leaving, he paused and then said that reading this journal was strange b/c i write things that i wouldn’t necessarily tell him.
made me think. i don’t consider audience too much — or maybe i do? i’m more circumspect than i am in the notebook only i read, that’s for sure. i guess i have to deliberate further.
and i hate telephones. have i mentioned that? hate ’em. nothing honest comes thru a telephone, or very little. i prefer email and letters: represenations of voice rather than actual, physical voice. the latter is too imperfect.