With the Ruff Lisp

Damn, I got Kool G Rap up on the mix.  Thundering in with the ruff lisp, ballet across the rhythm, career mob lyrics that seem so real.  I’d had some old Jamaican Rocksteady on with the fat, fruitlike rhythm guitar fills and it sounded so good and seeing as how there weren't no one else around today, I plugged in my guitar.  I’d just about figured out what key it was in when “Ill Street Blues” came on and I put down the guitar and thought about those days.

My younger daughter is off with her mom.  I got we-chat photos.  She’s learning how to use a loom to make fabric.  It’s a direct hit.  You can tell she loves it.  I’d have no mind for something like weaving.  I don't think I'd make good fabric.  Endlessly remarkable to watch young minds find their pathway.  Yesterday she was asked if I wanted to hear her drumming.  “Of course.”  I expected she’d get out a pot and pan, but soon it became clear that she wanted to hit the trap set. “It’s not set up.”  Fortunately I immediately felt like a fool casting back a jewel and soon we had the whole trap set up in the odd mini-basement we have. 

She rocked.  She confidently rode the high hat, thumped the base drum and cracked the snare.  And then she’d stop.  “Keep going.  It’s great.  Try and hold it for twenty seconds.”   I’d hold up one finger, and then two, as each beat cycle passed.   When she gets home today I’m going to see if we can jam.

I was supposed to have had a presentation to give this afternoon downtown.  I’m so glad it was postponed.  I reviewed the email just to be sure I wasn’t causing some catastrophe by not showing up.  I was right.  It’s idyllic not to have to go anywhere.

My older one and I have about thirteen more ten-page installments to go with Roskolnikov.  It’s taken a while but this means we’ve shared fifty of these ten-page installments to get this far.  I think ten pages feels right for both of us.  He’s confessed the crime to Sonya.  She insists that he confess completely and purify himself.  He’s no Napoleon, he admits.  But we love Roskolnikov and we agree.  He is above them.  He’s not going to submit to them.  Sitting there with in the room with the both of them is the murder itself.  He is stained and he squirms as the spot wont come out.  “She’ll never visit me in penal servitude” he thinks, after she has to leave abruptly to address another tragedy.