sometimes they come in groups.
fall is actually here. i can feel it now. time to keep the coat handy and anticipate the cooler mornings that will turn into colder mornings. time to go home for a weekend, just to see the leaves change a week before they turn here. time for apples from ellijay and considerations about carving a pumpkin through which i will never follow. time to populate the car with fall music. radiohead, for one. sisters of mercy, for another. cowboy junkies. morphine.
certain celebrities need to shut up. barbra streisand. jesse jackson. courtney love. harry knowles. jack valenti. (reasons? they’ll come later.)
the man is coming, so i suppose i need a ticket. anyone ever ask you that question about your have-to-go concerts? the performer that you would just have to see, should they blow through your town? well, for the longest time, my answer has been peter gabriel. the man’s a genius, really. everyone knows this. and now he has decided to bless atlanta with his presence. philips arena, november 5 — guy fawkes day. so i guess i better get on the phone. get my seat. call the master of tickets. do you have a “have-to-go-see?”
i have forgotten how to draw. my dad taught me. he started with simple profiles of people, a trick involving an upside down ice cream cone to make the forehead and the eyebrow. then we went on to boats. gold miners for a grade school project. i even did one thing for social studies where i drew portraits of every president up to reagan. i would draw my own comic books, something that took up much of my should’ve-been-paying-attention time in high school. and now i am trying to draw simple things — figures, faces, eyes — and the ease is gone. i am so far out of practice, removed from the craft.
perhaps that last one is not as inconsequential as i thought.