ithaca

(mo and i with synecdoche "tattoos" by me. mine: "everyone" and "everything," his: "somewhere" and "maybe somday" )

on the drive into ithaca, mike and dave's homeland, we passed schenectady. it of course had me thinking of synecdoche, new york (charlie kaufman, probably the best movie of all time). when maurice joined the tour in new york we almost immediately connected over this film and now we've probably clocked a couple of hours dicussing it. and possibly that much time singing "little person" (written by jon brion, performed by deanna story in the film). if you haven't seen it, rent it. watch it when you have plenty of time with little possibility for interruption either alone or with a friend or two who are sure not to talk at all during the movie or laugh at sad things.

we got to dave's dad's house and dave made us all some amazing spaghetti. most of us just sort of ate, drank beer, chatted, and went to bed.
the next day we wanted to go swimming so we set out on foot for a crazy trek to the swimming hole. eventually we found one with condoms, panties, and a few other things that i won't mention. needless to say we were not in the right place, but eventually found our way down to a magical little gorge at the base of a waterfall. the waterfall poured out from underneath a road above and right next to an old abandoned building built into the huge rock cliffs. this buildling had trees bursting out of the brick through the top, broken windows, and looked like either the wall had been swallowing it for years, or like it just somehow always existed within the hills and the water finally wore away enough to expose it. it was sort of post-apocolyptic. the rocks were really slippery and uneven everywhere but right by the building they were higher and flat and i wondered if it wa a parking lot or driveway years ago.
i saw a little turtle and swam like a fish in the little pools with emily, cole, and the constant thought of crocodiles underneath me (i'm the kind of girl who's afraid of sharks in pools.) we swam up to the waterfall and fell underneath it's illusions. we pretended to run up it on all fours, then to fly over it with our arms oustretched. i promise there were no drugs involved despite how it seems. i held my hand under it and resisted letting my arm plunge into the water. it looked like it was constantly coming closer to consume me but i trusted in its kindness that it would not.

later on that night we played a show at the nines. it was yet another noisy bar but a decent amount of people were paying attention to the music. dave and mike both call ithaca their home so they brought some dedicated audience members out. the major downfall of the show came when the sound person blasted a sound like all the souls of hell screaming up through the vents right on stage. the music had to be delayed while we assessed whether or not cole had been actually deafened in his left ear. i wasn't even on stage and one of my ears was ringing for days after. if i didn't know the band and cole well, i'd have not noticed a thing and been really happy with the show, but i could tell that the level of really 'putting on a show' had been somewhat sullied. the lyrics to "hooray for bailey moore" got changed to "hooray for mike and dave."
the next day cole and a few people needed to stay behind and practice, namely geoff. he wasn't able to bring his upright bass on tour for obvious reasons and has had sort of a difficult time finding one to play in the cities we've visited so he brought a viola instead. he picked it up for that very purpose a few months ago and impressed everyone with how good he already is at it. the rest of us headed back over the the river to with a car full of instruments and played on the rocks. i picked up a saxaphone for the first time since i made it squak as a child and learned a little riff for a tristero song. i'm now sort of addicted to the saxaphone. and the violin.

when i got back a group of us went to see UP, a very sad and charming pixar movie. my favorite moment is when doug the dog says, "i was hiding beneath your porch because i love you" after being yelled at by an old man. then we went to a bar with 48 beers on tap and played some pool.

the next day i went out thriftshopping with cole to look for a dress but couldn't find one i liked. everyone but cole, dave, and i left for syracuse to watch tristero and everyone only. isntead we rented let the right one in and wall-e (sort of an interesting combo) and made awesome sandwiches after we ventured to the grocery store. they were rosemary bread, apple smoked cheddar (toasted), avocado, cracked chili hummus, sauteed red pepper/garlic/shallots/spinach, and simmered pastrami. we also got some sun chips and brownie ice cream and stayed up until around four thirty in the morning.