Cantiga: Michelle's Blog

New York

Before I went on the road, Texas was a whole other planet. It never seemed possible to me that one could actually get there with a car. And while I don’t like all the places I’ve had to live, the world seems so much smaller and accessible to me now, and it’s quite a sensation to feel so invincible and fragile all at once, driving alone in a car across the country.

Now the band is in Sterling, New York, and it is absolutely one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life. We are camped out in the woods this time, among the rolling hills and farmlands-- a real relief from the unrelenting sun of the open fields of Texas. We rehearse in a beautiful garden at the Fly By Night Cookie Company in Fairhaven, where there’s always a breeze coming up from the lake. The sun glitters gold through the wet dark green leaves on the trees and you can listen to myriad birdsongs. In the morning I have tea and watch Charry pick up and pet the chipmunks (“Las Chippies”), which only he can do… he has a special affinity with animals; fish actually swim into his hands, and in Florida he befriended snakes and carried them around in his pockets. I’m just glad he wasn’t in my canoe when the band had some close encounters with alligators in the Everglades…

Sometimes I like to make a fire by Lake Ontario and watch the sunset while little black jumping spiders tickle my feet. I’ve never seen anything like the views from this lake—the lake is so expansive that all you can see is endless purple, clouds, and a glowing red-orange sun, and absolutely nothing else. (I hear National Geographic named this spot one of the top 10 spots for sunsets in the world.) When night comes, there are no city lights to block the stars and the thousands and thousands of fireflies. Sometimes a bunch of people get together here, singing songs and cooking “hobo food”… basically whatever you’ve got that can be cooked in some foil in the flames or shoved on a stick. For the first time in my life, I am safe to walk around at night, and listen to the frogs, crickets, and owls.

My family feels bad for me—they can’t understand why I don’t join an orchestra or get a full time job. They think I do this out of desperation. But I chose this lifestyle— I cherish this freedom more than anything else. I play the kind of music I want to play (i.e. anything and everything), however I feel like playing, with the people I want to play with, and no orchestra can give me that! I even enjoy the challenges of playing outside—you haven’t fully experienced your instrument until you’ve had to play it out in the rain!

But the best part is, we’ve had the most attentive, warm and welcoming audiences out here in Sterling, and I really love looking out from the gazebo and seeing familiar faces and people having such a good time!


Rehearsing at Fly By Night Cookie Company

Leaving Houston

driving down the highway with nothing
much on it
except for signs that insist
God loves me--
well that’s nice
but I was really looking for a sign
for good coffee
and there isn’t one

so I’m waiting for watered down coffee
in a dirty gas station
there are two beautiful blonde women
pushing a car up a hill
and America is turning the wheel
her name is America, imagine that
and nobody is helping them
her mother is shouting
“keep going America!”
and they show me how easy it is
to jump a car
and drink bad coffee

driving down the highway
with nothing much on it
except a man at a stoplight
holding a sign and
gazing into space:
visions of a cheeseburger
I don’t have a cheeseburger
but suddenly I have visions of one too--
maybe he’s a prophet

and there’s a tiny spider clinging
to my windshield at 75 mph
that somehow manages
to lift up a leg
I tell it to hold on tight
and I pull over
that spider will live
to reproduce
and sustain its species against
all odds--
isn’t that something

Stepping into a motel
the hallway smells
like something died and was made
into a pizza
the bath water is hot and I can smell the bleach
when I lie down and the lamp
makes a loud piercing sound like crickets screaming
(if they could scream)
I sit so long in the bathtub writing
this all down that I am reminded
of Jaques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat
and decide that’s enough
and hope there will be running water in the morning

which there isn’t
at this place in the middle of Tennessee somewhere
but I’m thankful for the etouffee and alligator
I ate yesterday
And that rockin cajun music on the radio
And the solitude

Sunday June 26
Over the past 4 months or so I've been astounded by the generosity of both friends and strangers who have welcomed me into their homes. From all levels of economic stability, people have been unbelievably helpful to me. Recently a total stranger who was sitting next to me on a plane invited me to her family's house for a holiday dinner when she heard I wasn't going to be home for the holiday. Then, just a couple weeks ago I was volunteering at the Kerville Folk Festival right outside of Kerrville, TX, when I suddenly became ill. The festival had an infirmary on site consisting entirely of volunteers who gave acupuncture, massage and Chinese medicine. I stayed there for 3 days and was treated for free... donations accepted, but never asked for. Not only that, someone who didn't know me and (who I never did get to meet) told my friends I could use his hammock when it was too hot to rest in my tent. (The temperature in Texas gets to be regularly over 100 degrees F in June, and was getting hotter than that inside my nylon tent.)
Now I have to leave some very good new friends who invited me into their house for a couple weeks so I wouldn't have live outside in Texas in the summer anymore. My stomach is in knots this morning as I get ready to make the drive from Houston to the faire in Sterling, NY... either in nervousness about driving alone, or in anticipation of all the horrible food I'm going to have to eat on the way over there. I'm just going to take it one day at a time... it's really hard to leave each place, but I'm trying focus on all the people I'll be excited to see rather than being sad about who I'm leaving behind.

The War on Bugs

There are certain advantages to living outdoors all the time, like being
able to cool off in the creek after playing kickball or badminton in the
Texas sun, taking late night walks lit by fireflies and spying on
armadillos as they rummage through the bushes for compost, picking wild
garlic for sandwiches, or going out to a field full of wildflowers in
every color you can imagine at sunset to play my fiddle or just putz
around. Life outdoors has its price to pay, though, with some of the same
problems as city living-- loud neighbors, bad smells-- but the major
complication for me are the aggressive biting bugs.

I try to explain to the bugs that I'm terribly sorry to be taking over
their space but I've got to live somewhere, and it's better that cutting
down trees, and anyway, I'll only be around for a few weeks. However,
somehow they don't get the message, and after my foot was attacked by a
whole nest of red ants I resorted to less peaceful methods of negotiation
and drowned their home with molasses. As I slapped a mosquito on my arm
this morning, my neighbor said, "Yup, everything in Texas either bites,
burns, or breaks your heart."

I'm sitting in a hot bath in a motel room in Vicksburg, Mississippi
writing in my journal now after a long day of driving through the edges of
tornadoes. What a change from the place I was staying in before!

The first day at the last campground I stayed at, I stood in the flooded
field through a drizzle of rain with a tent rope in my hands looking down
helplessly as the man-eating-red-ants crawled all over my blue tarp.
Sweat poured into my eyes and mosquitoes bit my neck and hands. My
glasses fogged up as they slid down my nose and I realized I'd have to
spend another night in the car... and there was no way in heck I was going
to be able to practice.

The nice woman who owned the campground invited me into her house and her
four Bull mastiffs-- huge, massive dogs that actually shake the house when
they move-- affectionately wiped their snouts on my pants after drinking
from the toilet. I took a shower and came out smelling like rotten eggs
form the sulfur. (People tell me the water here is actually good for me:
it supposedly repels mosquitoes and ancient peoples believed it had
magical healing properties. Somehow, I don't feel any different-- just
smelly!)

The cockroaches were amazing. For weeks they lived off nothing but the
glue that held the label to my bottle of Listerine-- if only I could live
so economically! I had to bear in my mind that I was the one invading
their space, and no the other way around. (That goes for the rats and
spiders of unusual proportions, too). When I finally got to lay on my bed
that first day and saw one crawling on the walls, I wrote this poem:

brown cockroach on white walls
this way, that way
if only he knew
how lucky he was
beneath the leaky
ceiling
and the cracked
light bulb

on green walls now
this way, that way
how does he know where to go?
antenae reach gently tapping
and every leg
makes a wish


CLICK HERE TO GO TO BLOG PART THREE