Space, Balls

Rockport, MA. First thing I see for the past four mornings: big fat ocean, big fatter sky, and a "Hold on, just putting on my blush!" from the sun. I'm drunk and delirious from the pull of the tides, feet and nose and hair all "Got to Give It Up" to the sea air. The amount of sheer space in this place high and low...riotous!

A much better beginning for this post than I'd planned last week while riding the M14 bus, where mini battles play out endlessly over who'll be the first to plunk their lazy, selfish, lard ass in a seat. What bugs me most are the people who automatically sit on the aisle-side of a two-seat row. For some reason, most riders opt to stand up rather than make the person in the aisle seat move if the window seat is vacant, which ultimately is an inefficient use of space and makes the aisle even more crowded. A good friend goes out of his way to ask the aisle sitters to move in, but I don't want to even get started on that bad energy-building path... I'll no doubt get crankier than I already am at having to fight for, oh, 3 precious inches of personal space.



(Cats, of course, have their own set of rules about these things.)

So...a morning sky and ocean that fill every inch of the 3 windows in my room at the inn, and then some? The kind of thing that gets you jonesin' bigtime for space when you don't have it anymore.

I love you, sky, for being all big and empty. I love you, ocean, for never clocking out at quitting time.

And in the words of my favorite poet Keith Richards, whose description of "Heartbreak Hotel" I'm stealing to explain how I feel about space: "It was bare, right to the roots that you had a feeling were there but hadn't yet heard...The silence is your canvas, that's your frame, that's what you work on; don't try and deafen it out."

Songs to space out to



Dead air...here ya have it. One of my favorite Beach Boys songs, this gem has not one but two periods when it just stops. And sits. And waits.

And I can see a setting sun wanting to choreograph to this one: