There are things that pop in my head like a tiny firecracker.

bang. snap. sizzle. small. very little smoke....gone.


They are just tiny pictures of things that don't always make sense. I feel like my brain is growing into space I didn't know I had. You think you can't possibly add one more memory, one more insignificant piece of information, or the whole gray wrinkled mess, will just cave into your chest, and then, there it is. One more thing. One more image. One more sentence. It layers itself into a million different planes of existence. I think to myself, it's all so impossible, and then I think, OH MY GOD, I just added yet one...more....word.

We are remarkable things, we humans. Wicked things. Wonderful things. Kind and cruel things.
Mysterious things, obvious things, deliberate and random. We are shards of a giant broken vase that the Universe dropped when it decided to be something.

It's not easy,- really truly understanding what you believe in. I don't always have words for what or why I believe in anything. I can't explain what God is to me, or what indeed God IS. Yes...God is everything, but that's an easy out. It seems like an undertaking that requires much more than a few sentences to explain yourself and what your beliefs are. I think we're given things to believe in from the second we come through the veil. We're given little hints and ideas and reassurances from the Abyss. We just lose them as we get older. The world picks away at our faith each and every second we stay here. It's a constant battle it seems, to believe in good things. To have faith that is indeed blind and without any tangible proof. You can't see stars during the day. You can't see your breath, but you can feel it when someone is nestled against your neck. I can feel the Universe nestled against my neck. I can feel something around me all me all the time. I can feel something shoot into my chest when I am given an idea. I am certain the "ideas" are not mine, they are simply gift of knowledge. We only discover what were allowed to discover.

The leaves here in the south are still a bright green. A few have fallen to the ground, but there is still a blanket of sage covering the entire city. The breeze is always damp. It's always fragrant. It's always got enough warmth to remind you that summer is gone for now. I walk around the neighborhood I am staying in and seldom pass anyone. When I do, they're pleasant, and they say hello and I say hello. We pass each other quietly. You can't hear your feet moving with the all the crickets that crick..... I always wonder who they are, these people I pass by,-and what their names are and what they do for a living and what their houses look like. I wonder if I'll ever see them again. Was that it, we were just meant to pass by, and nothing more?

I wish there was day where everybody had to have their homes open for anybody to just wander through. You could just go door to door and look through their cupboards and their sock drawers and their refrigerators. My mom and I always thought that would be fun. And then my mom would say, "But that would mean, that everybody could come through our houses"......
She thought perhaps that that wouldn't be so good after all.

Yeah, God and the great and Mighty Universe....
Much to ponder.
The funny part of it all, is how we argue with each other over what the truth is. It's hard to watch it on a global scale. The fighting that basically comes down to , "My God, is bigger than your God"....and the guns and the sirens wail. The righteous fighting the righteous....
Oddly,  siren just went by the front door. I wonder if it's going to the house where the guy lived that I passed this morning? I think about things like that. I think about what might be wrong with him. I feel my brain compressing with all these layers upon layers of pictures and books and words and memories and feelings and ideas....
We just seem to keep finding more space, more gigs, more bytes. Computers have a lot to learn from the human head. We don't run out of storage.  We just run out of time.

t's been terribly sweet having my parents living across the drive-way from me. I get up every morning and let the cat out onto my west facing deck, and glance over at their yard. My mom is almost always watering plants and checking on her beloved Geraniums. My dad is filling bird feeders and occasionally takes a moment to pat one of the dogs on the head, that  "yeah, yeah" kind of pat, "Stop following me around".....
I watch them cris cross their field, poking their noses into flower beds and shrubs and pots of various greens and herbs.
Dad waters his garden and then stands with his hands on his hips and just stares over the field. That's what it looks like from my deck anyway. His elbow perched on top of a rake and his left leg baring most of his weight.  I always think of rushing up behind him and  karate chopping him behind the knee. (He used to do that to me if I was day dreaming and standing around while I was supposed to be mowing or hilling potatoes or raking leaves).

It's been so wonderful just seeing them go about their days, the mundane beautiful, tedious, things we all do to fill up our lives. I can see them turn lights off when they go to bed. I can see their television flicker it's dancing blue lights on their living room walls.  My dad goes up to read at 9pm and my mom stays up to watch Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. She loves Bill O'Reilly. I think he's nuts. I really do. Nuttier than a fruit cake as my gram would say. My mom and I have very different political views. She's moderate but very liberal and I don't know what I am. That's the big divide. I don't know enough to care.
I don't want to know. Perhaps somewhere down the line I will care. I mean....I do care, but not enough to make educated decisions about who is doing what and why and what it all means. I am going to stop digging this fairly big hole now.

I was thinking of flying a big white flag over my house....

Just for the hell of it.

When I get home I am taking my folks to see "UP". It was one of the nicest little films I have seen in a long time. So many subtle knives cut through your heart, no matter how hard life may have made it.  It was very will written. Kids missed much of the pointed humor, but I am sure adults missed much of the simple sentiment that children understand oh so well. Anyway, I am talking my parents to a matinee. We'll sit in the dark with our popcorn and our respective drinks and I'll watch my parents watch the movie. I know my dad will love it.
I remember him taking me to a matinee in 78' to see STAR WARS. He came home early from work on a Saturday and just said we were going to a movie. I'll never forget it. My dad was 42 years old. He was a kid himself. I thought he was a hundred years old for all accounts and purposes. He seemed so old to me. Funny how my youthful perception warped and twisted what really was.

I looked over at him sitting there in the dark with the biggest smile on his face, gobbling up popcorn and sipping his Coke as Luke Skywalker soared through the star filled skies. The reflection of light sabers dancing off of his eyes. I won't forget it.
I wonder if he remembers that day....I'll have to ask him.

I look across at their house now, and wonder how long they'll live in it?  How many more years will I see the television flicker on their walls? How many more springs will see a garden planted. How many more summers of watering lawns and pruning growing trees...I think about it everyday. I always seem to be counting days. I know that's why there is a part of me that is so extreme. I sometimes try and live my life in one day. I push the limits of what I can do because I don't think there will be more days to be had. I am getting better at that. I have put my heart issues somewhere back there, where ever that is....I try not to think about it beating all the time. I know it's a funny heart, but it's a good heart.

A person that I severed my working relationship with a few years ago, lost a parent this past week. I have been thinking much about that.  Even though the relationship I had with this person  was lost, I have always maintained feelings for their family. I know it must be a horrible loss for everyone. Cancer steals life out from under us. I think of my parents and can't help but think of what a blow it would be for me to lose either one of them.  I am stuck not knowing whether to reach out and say how sorry I am, or keep my place in this line I have chosen, and just know, that they know, I am sorry for the loss of a dear person. I won't forget him and his zest for good food and wine and grandchildren and sunshine and golfing and family.
I'll hug my dad a little harder when I see him.

Memories are peculiar things. I don't really know how accurate they are. I don't know if the human mind is really all that good at storing them and keeping them "authentic". Memories seem to morph as the days and months and years accumulate. Most of the time, I have my memories put away in some far off corner of my mind. I recall them at my leisure, picking and choosing which ones I want to "look" at. They "look" vaguely familiar, almost like it was someone else who must have been living them. I sometimes wonder if it wasn't. I feel like "something" new walks into my body every so often and takes over day to day operations. Can't quite articulate that as well as I might like. Some people have called those "somethings",- "Walk-ins" My friend Kerry gave me a book once about "Walk-ins" and I have no idea what I did with it. I guess it "Walked out" of my house.  It was really interesting book in a creepy-cause-the-universe-is-giant-and-it-makes-my-head-split-kind of way.

My memories, the ones that seem the most "real" at least, are usually terribly haunting and horrible. They tend to STAB at me quickly and with great precision. FLASH FLASH FLASH. I am simply sitting in a chair, watching the rain, and there one comes, FLASH! STAB! ....and then retreat...The memory is sent back into that grey mass of flesh that is my brain. I draw air up through my teeth and try and piece together what it was that I "saw". Polaroids that the color has seeped out of. Water colors that have bled onto the ground with all that time. I actually twitch. Physically move in my chair when the memory FLASHES right there before my own eyes. Some of the memories have sound. Not like any sound I have ever heard before. High pitched screams of sorts.....but yet, different. Unearthly. Perhaps music that has no scales or notes, music that belongs to another realm. Again, I am left without words to describe what I actually see and hear. It matters not.

Good memories seem to be the ones I make up myself. I control them somehow, rewriting them as I go along my road. I insert pleasant things, things that were perhaps never ever there to begin with. I can feel my mind drawing pictures as quickly as it can to make the picture perfect. I see paper being cut up and paint being slathered onto memories that otherwise weren't quite so bright and colorful. I seem to accept them as my own. I accept the ideas that may or may not have been mine. It's all so oddly wonderful. What we are is so beyond me, I try not to think about it.
Memories are what define us as human beings, and yet they are no more accurate than a knife being thrown at a spinning target. Hit and miss as it were. I know that the dog doesn't go over and over things in her head, punishing herself for past transgressions. What is done is done. Only people do that. We go back time and time again to "relive" something we've done wrong. We steep ourselves in a thick brew of guilt and shame. We wallow in all our wrong doings. There are few of us that drown ourselves in good things, good thoughts, good memories. Very few indeed.

I don't know what got me thinking about memories. The mental fibers that have created my personality, and my intricate nature. All the time that has gone into what I am. "I remember...." How many of our conversations start with those two words?
I do remember going to the Drive-in with my Parents in the 60ties, and watching "A Space Odyssey-2001" It tapped into a part of my young mind that really sent me off on my "thinking" journey. The Universe...the endlessness of the Universe. I was never the same. The idea that thoughts were things was implanted into my tiny body. I somehow knew that how I thought, would effect everything I did and everything I would become. Anything I have accomplished in my life, was done so because I "thought" I could.  Even though doubt was like a vicious set of teeth at the end of a chain, I knew I could "think" my way through anything.

I need to rent "A space odyssey" again and watch it, to "see" what I remember.  I'd like to compare what really was, with what I "thought" it was.
I know, I know....
I am going to do some cardio and then think about dinner. And in between all of that, I think about you. One thing I know is real beyond any shadow of any doubt.

My flight was delayed trying to get back home from Nashville last Wednesday, well not so much delayed as re-routed. The pilot came on after hour 3 of our scheduled 2 hour flight and said we were going to have to land in Wichita Kansas,- as we were out of fuel.  We were supposed to go to Minneapolis and then onto Calgary that evening, instead we were soaring through the thunderclouds over the American mid-west.  I was traveling home to finish work on the SHeDAISY album. (I know, I know...it's been a long time in the making, but will be well worth the efforts I assure you.)  Kristyn had her dog, Midi with us in her little custom black travel bag with all her favorite toys and blankets and treats and plenty of air holes. Gotta have lots of air holes. She is as happy as a potato in that bag. Midi is a much better traveler than Kristyn is...

Anyhow, we landed in Wichita, refueled and took off to Minnesota. Obviously the Calgary flight had left 3 hours earlier and we'd have to hunker down for the night in some lovely hotel and catch the first flight out in the morning. We checked into a Marriot Courtyard, looking bedraggled I might add, with Midi keeping it hush hush in the bag. I mean the dog is 3 pounds, it's like bringing in slab of butter for a sleep over. I ran across the street after we all settled in to grab us some food. The only thing within walking distance was an IHOP....good grief...I brought back a chicken sandwich and something that looked like a chef salad. (I would have rather eaten the chef, well, er,- maybe not).

We all fell into our respective beds, set the alarm for 7 and prayed that we'd have better luck in the morning. At about 4 am, Midi was quite intent on waking me up to go to the bathroom. She was on my bed and is too little to jump onto the floor by herself, you have to set her down.  She has little pee pads that we'd laid out on the kitchenette floor, and she's really good about going on them, I just had to get her there. It was so dark and of course me being half awake, thought that I could make it the 8 steps through the unfamiliar room. We had suitcases everywhere, and I stepped on the corner of one, tried to correct myself, stepped onto another one and began the very long fall through the dark with a little innocent dog under my left arm. I knew there was a glass coffee table to my right so I tried to keep my hand over her head and lean to the left.  My head and right arm smashed into the ground, just missing the table, and Midi got caught between my rib cage and one of the suitcases. I just heard screaming, which was coming from me, and the dog yelping with such a high pitched cry that my heart instantly snapped into a million pieces. Kristyn heard it all from the other room and came running in, she went flying over the suitcases trying to get to us, still in a heap on the floor. She threw on the light and rushed to help me get up.  Midi's little leg was dangling like it had been ripped from it's socket, She had stopped crying and looked at me with the saddest little face and began to lick my nose that was bleeding. I had blood on the dog and my pajamas and the rug and the table. I had just crushed that little dog's wee leg, and here she was trying to fix me. It made me cry my head off. kristyn was crying cause she didn't know what the hell we'd done and there was blood everywhere. We both thought is was the dog's head. Thank God it wasn't. I know I could have killed her. I can't imagine what I'd have done if I did.

We knew something was very wrong. Do we go to an emergency hospital in a strange city?
Do we try to go back to Nashville in the morning?
Do we just carry on to Calgary?
Midi laid down to rest right away. She had a little drink of water, tried to console US,  and then just went to sleep with a broken leg. I mean it was broken in half. We didn't know that til the next day, when we did indeed go to Calgary and immediately went to the CARE animal hospital. The Xray was so sad. That leg that is maybe the size of my pinky finger, just snapped above the knee.
She didn't let one peep out on our flight back home. She just laid so quietly, even when we took her through security, all that moving about must have been agonizing. Dogs have a way of just setting pain aside I guess, they are quite remarkable. If it had been my leg, I would have been in an ambulance pumped full of Morphine, complaining. Not Midi. She was so brave and good. I could still cry about it now a week later.
She had a great surgeon and it looks like she'll make a full recovery. She just has to "stay still" for another 5 weeks. She is so frustrated right now. She doesn't understand why we won't let her run after birds and toys and my cat....She has no clue that she even broke her leg. She's just back to being a happy, gleeful, brilliant soul. I wish I would have been the one to break my leg, but it wasn't. I would have gladly gone on Morphine for a few nights and felt sorry for myself. I can't believe I fell on her. I can't believe I was that stupid, to not turn a light on. I won't ever do that again. It's not the first time I have fallen in a strange hotel room. I have tripped on everything from my own shoes to the cord on my computer to a hair brush. I mean I've nearly killed myself a half dozen times. I don't know how I didn't.
Anyhow, I am in LA working all this week and my mom and dad and Chris are babysitting. It's a lot to ask anyone, but the show must go on. Dogs are incredible beings. I haven't had much experience in my adult life with dogs, so this is all pretty new. I have to say, you learn things about yourself that were buried somewhere inside yourself. You become very enlightened as to how you actually feel. I feel a lot more than I thought. If that makes sense....
I hope to never fall on anything living again...
It's terrible to hear that shrill scream come out of such a cute fuzzy head.
I won't ever forget it.
Midi already has......

LIfe is rushing past. Here it is the end of April and I feel like I just took my Christmas tree down. I try not to count the days, but inevitably I do. Lately I have not known what day of the week it is. I had to really think hard about what today was. I thought it was Friday, but it's Thursday. I had to look at my computer to figure that out. At least I am down with the year, although I have forgotten what that was as well from time to time. I am really not sure what the next 40ty years are going to be like.
I went for a really long run today, and kept passing fairly large turtles. I stopped, turned around and thought it best that I set them into the trees. I mean turtles? They are the southern equivalent to the Alberta gopher I think. Midi thought they were better than a bone. She barked like a mad man and I could honestly hear the turtles kind of make a hissing sound. Very weird if you ask me. I had a pet turtle when I was a kid but it's life was short lived as I took it for a bike ride in the front pocket of my Levi's. It had passed on by the time I rounded the corner back into our driveway. I cried for days over that. I figured it had it's shell to go into....nope. My parents didn't get me another one. I think about that turtle more often than you might think.

I met a very interesting old woman on my jaunt today. She was walking a huge puffy white dog, who I believe was well into it's hundreds as well. She had on purple from head to toe. Perfect magenta make up on her eyes. Bright perfect circles of pink blush. Red lipstick...her hair was a wonderful silver white, pinned up into a neat little coil on top of her head. She was decked out to walk the dog! She looked just beautiful.  I will probably be in an orange Moo Moo with skid marks on my arse when I am her age. Oh, and I'll be drunk on cheap port.... I stopped and talked to her for a while as the dogs were checking each other out.  Midi loves big dogs. The bigger the better. She doesn't much like the little ones, in fact, she turns into a crazed Whirling Dervish, snapping and snarling and practically spitting her teeth out. The silver haired lady told me that Midi was very cute and she asked if she was a Yorkie. "No", I said, "She's a Morkie, Maltese and Yorkshire pudding". She laughed at that. She said something about the nice weather and the leaves on the trees and then we said good bye.  I have been thinking about her since I got home. I wonder what her life has been like?  I wonder who she is? Where she lives? It's all very odd. I won't see her again I am sure. LIfe is so random.

My folks are going to Vegas tomorrow. Look out "Slots of Fun". I wish I could be a fly on the wall for that trip. It'll be nice for them to get into the sunshine for a week or so. It's been snowing in Calgary right up until a few days ago. Maybe our summer will be really long this year, like right to December. Or not..I am sure the snow will be flying again in October. Hey Canadian weather keeps out all the rif raf. Winter...

I am heading over to the UK in a month. I am going to Dorset to hang out with some friends. We'll walk for miles everyday and sit out front of the pub to watch the chickens. It'll be my last chance to just sit and relax as the record stuff for me will be starting in june. Press junkets and all the rest of it that comes with the launch of a new record. I am actually very excited about all of it. The record is very good. It's very different for me. I don't know how to describe it. It's just good, that's all I know.

My friends dad Peter passed away.  I guess it was very beautiful and peaceful. It's such a gift to leave with us, those last moments in a body.
I was glad I got to say good bye.
I'll be saying Good bye a lot in my life, and hopefully, Hello as well.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?JSONLINK=/video/world/20...

CNN's Atika Shubert reports on how Susan Boyle is coming to grips with her sudden global stardom.

this is really fun...susan boyle is feeling the fame bug!!