nothing really beautiful or amazing happened today. it was the first of our two formal nights. we do the captains toast (jazz standards) and the 60's show. we played stevie's "you are the sunshine of my life" first, and then i kind of went off on whole tone scales (the second chord of the intro is all whole tone). too symmetrical, i said, and wheres that halfstep edge, that sexy dissonant bite, that s-s-s-truggle, di-di-di-difficulty, zazazaconflict that makes life so -*yow*-. for the rest of the set the sax player and i played whole tone scales at every opportunity (ie every dominant seventh chord). skating up and down their space age slides!

we are up in a box stage left, looking down on the audience so we can see their gaping faces. they really love the shows, they get so happy. there were some nice moments out there tonight: a group of teenagers singing along to "help!", and a beautiful family in the front row, mother, young girl, father, the girl was maybe 8. she kept putting her hands up to her new hair berette (sp?) to make sure it was in place. formal nights are great for seeing young children in dressy clothes for the first time. so careful and gentle with their new precious things! she had really cute round glasses too, and she smiled and tucked her head into her fathers arm after the lead singer gave her a high five during "surfin usa".

but overall, nothing really, and i dont feel particularily happy or sad.

i had a child in a dream last night, the size of a pistachio. he was doing wild, digital fast breakdancing on the carpet. then another child, equally small, joined in, and they played pinballed across the carpet, bumper car twirling, and then swoosh! under the couch...we lifted the couch to find them, and they were not there. and then, there they are in the pocket of my cardigan sweater. we left to go enroll in college, enroll in geometry, and i took the long way down, a huge sandy path in the rain, the sand filling my sandals and the wind and lightning purple deep purple. later, my bicycle skidding on shiny asphalt.

i wonder how my child will be. will i indulge her in the materialist ecsatsy of fancy new things? let her grow out of it later? let her pretend to grow out of it...hm. i cant wait until i buy my new powerbook. though, i spent much of today making a gift, making, with pens and glue and the torn off covers of old hardcover books from the crew library. i noticed that i like using mistakes to my advantage-- this slip of the pen makes a really neat design, etc. it felt good. good for me. but will they like it? really? always selfish acts of love. sigh.

still, i guess that was beautiful, hanging out in the crew mess with a coffee and european cookies on a linen napkin, brushing glue on to avoid lumps, whistling "itsy witsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini" over and over again, fixing little mistakes by creating large abstarct blocks with black and silver permanent markers.

if you make a mistake in bingo, and call bingo, and then when the bingo commisioner comes over to check your card he finds that youve punched a number that wasnt called, you know what thats called? its called a bongo.

another thing my polish roomate does is comment on my comings and goings.
"you going?"
"aha! you come back!"
or, more perplexing: "aha! you come back?"

kenny, the conspiracy theorist trumpet player, asked me today if i beleived in reincarnation. i told him i didnt beleive in anything, but i thought there were prettier ideas than reincarnation out there. the book im reading now, "the third policeman" by some irish guy whose name...flann o'brien? i dont think so. one thing thats happens in this delightfully odd book is that in a bicycle obsessed town people become more and more bicycle like as their riding over the bumpy rocky roads causes their atoms and the bicycles atoms to mix. they dont actually turn into bicycles, they just can be seen leaning against walls and posts.

how many atoms would i have to lose before im not me anymore? ha.
is that my skindust behind the desk? ha.
when will i have a child? ha.

one of the crew channels plays a constant loop of csi, las vegas and miami. id never seen it before. i love the main guy in miami. he is so cool. he knows how to use language. "no. heres what youre going to do." i also saw the film "chicago" for the first time today, and i liked it too. really good braiding of the musical numbers with the real world. he had it coming! he had it coming! oh and that tap dancing lawyer at the end! man!

these are small pleasures that ease me and cool me and cease the pain of my useless and pointless knowledge.

the night before, after the drummer and i finished a really excitng, tight game of chess (the d column was a real traffic jam: black king d8, just a step shy of promotion white pawn d7, white rooks d 1 and 3. and a black rook stalking outside on f7, threatening [and eventually enacting] a dubious rook trade), we poured the pieces into the torn flat box and stared at each other for a moment.

earlier that night, we were watching pool in the crew bar, and this big guy from trinidad who can make the ball jump (and thus make me girlishly yelp) said "bloodclot!" as a curse upon missing a shot.

so now were staring at each other. and then i said, well good, im going to go to bed..and then tomorrow well just do this all again. and he said, yup, good luck with that.

then we ran up the steps, my sandalflops echoing all through the ship.