whispers

Somehow this day is skipping along. It’s nearly three and a half hours since the cardinal-tweet alarm on the phone, me quieting that bird and swinging right on out of bed – now adorned with summer sheets – at 2:59. Call it middle of the night or wicked early in the morning – time’s time, second and hour hands doe-see-doe. Think Talking Heads – Same as it ever was.

The dawn showed up a while ago and has traveled on, west, which I suppose is this planet spinning east. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band had an album titled “East West”. I don’t know why I thought of that, I never owned it, though along the way Mike Bloomfield became a guitarist I was pretty crazy about.

Which reminds me of a guy with red hair who’s name I cannot remember, this was sophomore year at Cape Cod Community College, ’68-’69, he came to the cottage Julius Britto and a freshman named Frank and I were renting in West Yarmouth, a not-too-far hitchhike to classes when I went. Anyway this guy would come once in a while and he almost always had black beauties and often seconols, which I would often purchase from him. The point is he turned me on to a rock group named Electric Flag, which included Mike Bloomfield on their first album and Buddy Miles on their second. They played at the Monterey Pop Festival, in all its ground-breaking famous-ness, along with Jimi Hendrix and Laura Nyro and The Byrds and Big Brother and the Holding Company – Janis Joplin and I share a birthday – and about which The Animals wrote and recorded a song, which has always been among my faves in all the world.

I bet hippies and other fun people were skipping that weekend in Monterey too, like this morning’s dawn has skipped, like I’m hoping to be skipping through this weekend, all entangled with my sweetie and the SoCal milieu.

By the way, on that Paul Butterfield LP, both Michael Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop played guitar. Which I would have said “Far out” to back then, and happily confess to using those two words fairly regularly all the way up to yesterday. It’s funny what shined on through, through that haze of beauties and Pabst Blue Ribbon and all kinds of Mary Jane. Back in the day. Before the Red Sox were winning. When it was taking me seven years to get my Bachelor’s. When, even then, the sweet, skipping dawns of California were whispering in my ears.