The night before all hollows

I was in a bit of a mood last night, so I sat in my room and drank bottles of Black Butte Porter and sipped shots of Balvenie and smoked a little smoke and listened to old favorites -- Patti Smith's "Southern Cross", the Roches' "Damned Old Dog" and "The Troubles", Citizens Utilities' "Call It Your Own", Fripp's "North Star" and "Water Music", Spearhead's "100,000 Miles" (is a lonely place), and on and on and on. In between songs, I could hear the pagan drumming at the troll up the street, as my neighborhood celebrated the dead.

Around 9:30 I heard a rap rap rapping at my window, and it wasn't a raven, but a Salmon. I opened the window, and my neighbor crawled in, bringing a big bottle of Sheaf Stout with him. This is an ancient tradition that has fallen by the wayside since he went and had a child almost three years ago, but he's lately been working long hours on a project that just wrapped yesterday and the wife and child were peacefully asleep after a hard night of halloweening. He needed to blow off some steam.

So we drank Sheaf Stout and sipped shots of Balvenie and smoked a little smoke and reminisced about old shows and listened to old favorites -- Built to Spill, 7 Year Bitch, Hammerbox, Bootsy Collins, Funkadelic, the Roots, and to top it all off, as so frequently in the past, Digital Underground's amazingly thick and throbbing "Tales of the Funky", which even got us up and dancing. It was heading toward midnight when I kicked him out into the night. The troll drums were silent.

I'm still in a mood this morning -- not helped by the inevitable hangover -- but it was good to commune with my roots and the ghosts of the past in the company of an old friend. It's good to know that the ground is still there. And you know, if I were I damned old dog, I wouldn't have to goddamn human be.