Tour 3

This is from Providence, RI on Saturday night. To see more of this nonsense (and lots of flying hair), go here.

Unprocessed:
It was nice to be back in Philadelphia for a serendipitous Sabbath. Our 7/2 show in Brooklyn fell through so we drove home through the night after the Providence show. Being at home is completely surreal, especially since I know I'll be leaving again in a couple of days. Spending the afternoon with petite-amie, grasping a fleeting presence, reminded me that I can't ever seem to be sure whether I'm coming or going. The quintessentially Philadelphia summer weather -- oppressive humidity, followed by a raging thunderstorm -- was sublime for once, because it felt like home is supposed to feel. But do I have a home? I have a Home, but for right now, I feel like a displaced person.

The problem is that nothing is real anymore. I live in a perpetual waking dream, so surrounded by constant changes that there is nothing to rest on, nothing tangible to abide in. It's not that I'm a creature of routine, craving some sort of predictability to create stability, rather it's just that constant overstimulation and scenery changes cause a sense of helplessness, resignation, and fatalism. I'm not in control of anything. This is ultimately for the best (the situation that is, not my current attitude towards it), but for a person who is overly concerned with memory and the passing of time, it is disconcerting to feel like I am always being rushed on by tides in which I have no say.

I am, however, miraculously provided for. In the state of pure dependence and loss of control, there is something beautiful and sweet in receiving from the hand of God. I was sitting in a coffee shop in Portland Maine last week, just so I could get on the Internet (too poor to afford food or drink), and a waitress came over to me with a plate of pita bread and garlic hummus and said, "This is courtesy of Katie Smith [Armine's girlfriend]." Kate, who we had stayed with the preceding night, had called her friend who worked there and told her to "find the kid with glasses and a ponytail and feed him." In that moment I became conscious of a more-than-passing similiarity to the Israelites, hungry and wandering in the desert, fed with manna from heaven.


Psalm 18 / Be Little With Me / redeeming the basement couch / gifts / Micah 6:8 / the ocean / holy rain / daily bread / presence / tactility / tangled bodies / tears