Return
Of The Big Sleep
I have always been one
of those guys who was a little short on enthusiasm for “New Age” stuff. Oh, it’s fun to poke around in all the geegaw
shops in places like Sedona and Cassadaga, messing with the crystals, discovering
new facts about Stonehenge and checking up on what those pesky aliens have been
up to. When I was in my twenties, I even
read forty or fifty books on extraterrestrial intrusions, most of them pretty
convincing. But after twenty or thirty
years went by and nothing happened, I gravitated toward an attitude of well, if
it doesn’t affect my life one whit,
who cares?
This is not to say I
completely dismiss the interesting possibilities inherent in spiritualism. As they say in Germany, some of my best
friends are spiritualists, or, at least, spiritual. Barbara Ciarel, who cuts my hair three or
four times a year whether I need it or not, is such a person. I have known Barbara since 1970, when she
used to come into Silver City—sister store to the Subterranean Circus—to buy
clothes. Barbara was a wild woman,
running amok on the dating scene, a stylish dresser. When she was busy, which was almost always,
she would call us and tell Ricky Childs, our number one women’s apparel guide,
to “pick out three or four hundred dollars worth of stuff that would look good
on me and I’ll pick it up at four.”
Store owners like people like
Barbara Ciarel. I started getting my
hair (there was a time when I had a bunch) cut at Barbara’s salon and now, 42
years later, I have finally balanced the books on her purchases. In those days, we didn’t think of Barbara as
a particularly spiritual person.
Time passes, things
change. Barbara eventually married, had
kids, bought a building just off Tower Road, opened her own salon, got divorced
and became spiritual. She knows I’m an
“outsider,” so she doesn’t lay it on too thick, but she does think it important
to keep me posted on whatever fabulous guru is in vogue, recent threats to the
planet from obscure menaces and how her life has been affected in the last
three months by spiritual forces of various descriptions. Hearing all this, you would probably think
Barbara is sort of an odd duck. You
would be wrong. She is a normal, happy,
vivacious woman with a good business and a full life with a multitude of
friends. And she still tells the best
date-gone-wrong stories of anyone in my universe.
A few years ago,
Barbara was operated on for colon cancer.
I visited her in the hospital.
She looked uncharacteristically flat—weary and trampled. But she remained positive and unafraid.
“They want me to have
radiation and chemo,” she said. “I’m not
putting that stuff into my body. I’m
going to handle it with a specific diet.
And other stuff you don’t believe in.”
More than five years later, Barbara is perfect. Who am I to say she doesn’t know what she’s
doing?
Then
Came Tiara
A few columns back, I
exclaimed upon the wonders of my new massage woman, Tiara Catey. Tiara describes herself as “spiritual, not
religious.” The building she operates
out of is filled with the same New Age appurtenances as are many of the massage
places I’ve been to but this salon has one thing the others don’t. This one has Tiara.
When you first go in
to her salon, Tiara sits you down, not unlike your doctor, and goes over the
things that are bothering you. Most of
the time, as with me, there is probably a recitation of aches and pains, stiff
necks, lower back woes, the usual suspects.
But she wants you to tell her more.
So, on my third visit, I brought up the sleeping problem that has been
going on for months, well-reported in this column.
“Have you seen an
acupuncturist about this?” she asked.
“Never occurred to
me.”
“Try three visits. If it doesn’t help by then, stop.”
OK. I was happy to have a New Plan. When you can’t sleep, you’ll try
anything. Even needles.
“I think we should use
the sandalwood oils today,” Tiara continued, waiting for approval. What the hell do I know?
“Well, be my guest,” I
told her. She proceeded to blend her
brew, then distributed it liberally over my body, mending my various ailments in
her usual deft manner. I thanked her and
left, appreciating the incomparable feeling of being Mr. Plastic Man again and
expecting nothing more.
That night, amazingly,
I never woke up. Surely an anomaly, I
reckoned. Next night, same thing. It has been NINE nights now and I am still
sleeping through the night. Siobhan
thinks I am just suggestible—and, if so, fine—but Tiara never indicated that she could solve the problem. I think she has strange juju. I wrote her a note asking if she was an Exotic
Sleep Shaman. She credited the
sandalwood oil. I read up on sandalwood
oil and discovered that it had some sleep-inducing properties but I think it’s
Tiara’s mojo that’s doing the job. I
can hardly wait to see what she can do
with yaws or gout or whatever I get next.
In the meantime, I’m going down to Sam’s. I’ll be in the sandalwood aisle, looking for
the Large Economy Size.
Alice’s
Restaurant—Still Open
Last Saturday, Siobhan
and I trooped out to White Springs for the latest installment of the Florida
Folk Festival. Among other things, this
means we have to stop on the way and eat dinner at Sonny’s Barbecue, a
non-spiritual meal if ever there was one.
Sonny’s always has what we’d call “an eclectic mix of customers.” Sorta like the carnival always has an
eclectic mix of freaks. Sonny’s is not
only home to the Bubba Consortium but also to the Pierced Adolescents and the
Veterans Of Foreign Wars. Everyone, it
appears, likes Barbecue. We got a
waitress with a new tongue stud which she hadn’t yet learned to talk
around. She spoke a strange foreign
language not unlike Hindi, but we managed.
That’s our contribution to the Sonny’s culture for the next twelve
months.
White Springs,
Florida, home of the Florida Folk Festival, is a tiny little town on Route 136,
just 3 miles off Interstate 75 and several miles north of Lake City. It’s a three-day affair, which is alright if
you’re not particularly busy, and a lot of people aren’t. Tons of them camp out in the state park that
is home to the festival and sleep on the shores of the Suwanee River, which is
difficult to detect in these days of drought.
There is a lot of action all over the park, several stages with singers
and dancers gyrating to the music, not to mention a scattering of booths where oddly
dressed pioneers will regale you in the Old Ways of doing things like spinning
sorghum into gold or making your very own whisk broom. I’m not making this up.
Well, maybe a
little. But we just went for Arlo.
Arlo Guthrie has been
around a long time. I have seen him when
he was young and when he was middle aged and now, when he is threatening to get
old. I saw him at the Hampton Beach Casino
in the mid-80’s, when his children were tiny and at the Folk Festival a few
years ago when his daughter brought her own band. Arlo is always the same. He has a residence in Florida now (in Indian
River County) in addition to his old digs in Massachusetts, so the Festival was
an easy drive. And the guy loves to
perform. He spoke of getting bored one
winter and calling some friends in Norway to set up a series of concerts there. You’ve got
to love to perform to face Norway in winter.
Anyway, this concert was one of the better Arlo shows we’ve seen because
he did it himself, no band to accommodate, no throw-away songs to placate
co-performers. It was all old Arlo stuff like City of New Orleans, Pretty Boy Floyd, I Don’t Want a Nickel….and,
of course, father Woody’s This Land Is
Your Land. A good time was had by
all, even if we didn’t get home til after midnight.
During the show, we
couldn’t help but notice the prominent positioning of the “signers,” who
supposedly relate the lyrics of the songs to the unfortunate deaf people out
there. Now, I don’t want to be Mr.
Insensitive Man, but I have always wondered why deaf people want to go to
things like concerts in the first place.
Concerts are about music which
you must actually hear to appreciate,
right? It’s like Stevie Wonder going to
the fireworks. Why bother? And another thing. Do we really need seven hundred signers out there leaping around flapping their
wings when there are probably only three deaf people in the whole place? And what’s going on with these signers,
anyway? How come two signers can be out
there making different signs to the
poor confused deaf people? And there’s
no way they can possibly keep up with the singers—try signing to The Devil Came Down To Georgia
sometime. You’d sign yourself to death
and die in a frazzle. It’s a dilemma. Better stick with The Star Spangled Banner.
It’s slow and everybody knows the words anyway.
The
Hessians Are Coming. Soon
Kristina Maier, our
summer house guest from Berlin will be arriving June 24th. She wants to visit Sea World and the Kennedy
Space Center, she says, and maybe go to a horse race. Kristina wrote the other day, asking what
clothes she should bring, especially for the horse race. She didn’t want to be “underdressed.”
Kristina, honey,
you’re coming to Florida. We don’t know
the meaning of the word “underdressed” here.
Vacation
Advice
Last week, we wrote
about what a wonderful place was Austin, so naturally some people out there
wanted to get their two cents worth in about their own home towns. Leslie Logan even sent pictures of
Portland. NICE pictures, too. We’re not so sure about Portland. Isn’t it cold there? And rainy?
I mean, you can’t just stay in the house and look at Mount Hood out the
window all day.
This got us to
thinking, however. Summer is icumen in
and people will want to be going on vacation.
Why don’t you write us and extol the many virtues of your home town. Or anyplace else you truly love. For those of you with absolutely NO ideas,
we’d like to suggest you go visit our old friend, Jack Gordon, in Laguna
Beach. It’s absolutely beautiful out
there and Jack is always complaining that nobody ever comes to visit. No need to call weeks in advance, just give
him a call when you’re on the way. His
cell number is 949-322-0392. He’ll be
looking forward to seeing you. Really.
