O Elvis, when to you I said the Prayer. Chester River Runoff @ Seacrets and other Myths and Dreams.

Mandy and I were in Memphis at Elvis'.  It was 2007 and we were on a 48-hour mission to get to an army base in Texas, I can't remember if Graceland happened before or after we stayed straight where we should've merged and next thing you know wound up in Alabama, or Arkansas, one of the A states not sure which but one otherwise not on our route.  We drove that route-not-really-our-route til the sun went down and purple twilight was everywhere and the road became a single lane, cutting through cotton fields with white puff-drifts breezing along the edges and high and thick in the side of the ditch.  Finally soon after that we were out of the car laughing, laughing so much at the middle of nowhere deep south cotton field that our road laid down before us, laughing and picture-taking and story-telling, a non-stop MandyKelly fury of redbull and flavored mini-cigars.

Mandy and me, before Red Bull existed.  Different Spontaneous Trip.  Domenical, Costa Rica.  Dec 1996.

Later, or before, or at any rate whenever it was that we made it to Elvis', I made an exaggerated deal about Graceland being my wedding gift to her.  It seemed right, it seemed epic, it seemed of the epochs, it seemed mythic as Mandy and I were then and always are to me.  To go visit the house of Elvis, the King, is what I mean.  Neither of us were Elvis fans, necessarily, but both of us found ourselves so moved by his timelessness, by the legacy of him, the specific honey-magic he generated that we were weepy again and again.

Last night Chester River Runoff played here in OC.  They opened for a band called The Electric Company's CD release and the whole thing started with the boys live on Ocean 98 playing the Live Lixx show. 

CRR, On the Big Screen.  Ocean City, April 2011.

In November, at the same big club, in the same corner up near the same stage where we always go Jotto and I were dancing like mad to a typical OC cover band.  I rooted my high-heeled feet down through the hydro-bouncing stage, I loosened my stance in Mountain Pose so my spirit hung gentle and witnessed easy and soft as a wild rose. O heart of moon and ocean, let me reign in with your song,  O mama spirit mama la mar mama la luna, mama the wise earth, o all she holds which is all that is here.  O, Life.  I raised my arms in dance, a dance prayer all dance is prayer and I rolled my eyes and beseeched holy Life, said help me dance this mediocrity away.  I twirled and twirled and twirled and whirled and frenzy danced so much like I love to do with Jen.  Later that night, at Mambo's, while Jott was busy in a textbubble that I was judging her for in a funny laughy way, Nate from the Electric Company walked in I didn't even know original bands existed here then and had never heard of his.  It was enough, that one night talk over the seat booth with him who knew and was friends with Sam, of witty, flirty talk.  Enough to keep me rooted in the deeper life myth, the Call.

Elvis is Here.  Graceland, Dec 2010.

O Elvis.  O ELvis, I said and would have grabbed Mandy's hand had she been standing near, O Elvis, we were there at his gravesight Mandy and me, out back of could be GlnBrnieBrklynPrk Memphis, Tennesee. O Elvis now got me Graceland touched, forever Graceland-bound. I wrapped me, wrapped the self the me that touches the timeless heart the heart of all things, touched in the heart of the emotions we felt, Mandy and me.  O Elvis and the sun shined and there he lay, and it was still and beautiful, O wrap my friends in the same big spirit myth the one you've evoked here today in me.  O Elvis and Angels who looked so happy on him bless them, bless them please. I brought them there, I summoned Walsh then, the boys from Chester River, I summoned The Took and Josh and his Parade, too. 

Rocking Chair.  Ben's Farm, February 2009.

Last night CRR played Molly's song. About too many sunny days and I went up near them close as I could to them, my old tribe of mad genius men, my old friends.  To have with them a moment for her where it was peace.  My friend of the precious wanderer tribe, poet-spirit sister of things too big for this world to see.  They wrote that song before death took her and I was in Oregon when that happened last June and couldn't be part of the ritual Ben and Sam arranged that said goodbye.  They played her song and I closed my eyes and kept them closed for long and let the song be a prayer of thankfulness for it all: and in that time there in Morley Hall with the songs and dance-prayers to follow me the wild grl me came back on me and in my happy bluegrass dancing in my wedge spring high heels I actually was the myth of then, the myth of us the myth of how it all came to be.  Country as hell, country wild as I used to be, I had barefeet and there a great bonfire in the mad brickpit with flames as high as six feet and there tall pine trees and there a stage in front of a late harvest corn field and there middle of the night christmas lights on the tree branches and on the grape arbor hung just so, and there all the music, all my friends, all the fresh grown food the pot luck kitchens the river the naked swimming, there the ever-witnessing big white full moon.  That one solstice at Ben's farms on our backs in her the Chester the river silk and moon milk on our summer tanned river skin. Running in the wild dark and leaping in.  Dancing and hamming and jamming and there two in the morning shadows on the backlit sky,  wooping the wild spirit wild as it used to be, fresh rockfish fresh corn fresh herbs bike rides coffee shops genius madness, poetry, wild as it still is because it Was and all that is is from, always, what used to be.

Goose Blind.  Chester River @ Ben's.  Febraury, 2009.

I thought of Elvis then, and my prayer to him back then for these my sacred friends.  I remembered November, same dance hall different dance--of desperation--the night that I first met Nate when I forgot but he was sent by Life as Reminder all that comes passes, to come back in different ways again.

I blessed Myth then, thought of Mandy and all my precious wild women-grls, I danced some more and loved my friends and loved even more the perfect timelessness in the heart, the Heart of the heart, the heart that lives inside us all and that I am thankful cuz I live it for sure, its gift of livingness inside me.