song of the day: fall awake / (NOT!)
word of the day: schwangershaftstriefen / it's german for "stretch mark's"

the show last night @ winston in amsterdam was cooool daddy-o. the venue is very sweet, the quintessential kinda club / parlor vibe that makes a classic space to play in. really cool decor. i'm not sure if people took pictures or not, but i know we have video so you can see some of it in a stu cam. i went on at about 10:30pm. played for about 45 or 50 people, pretty good on a wednesday night in a town i've never played in before. even got requests for songs from real, live amsterdam residents who were at their first show (a woman wanted to hear Wizard, but unfortunately walked in right after i just played it). i was feeling pretty mellow for the first twenty minutes or so. this was a combination of 1, disrupted / deprived sleep patterns 2, walking around the red light district for two days and seeing depressed woman in lingerie staring out at the world through big, wall-sized glass windows. not hot. depressing. i think the sizzle on the red light district lasts about a day. the live sex shows are stilted and choreographed (so my friends tell me...seriously, i didn't bother seeing one), the girls in the windows look positively sad, and reason # 3 for me being mellow in the first twenty minutes of my show was that the two openers were woman, they created a kind of Joni Mitchell vibe in the room, and after two of them in a row, i didn't really feel i could get up and just go all masculine. i started with Bell (very feminine song) then went into Nothing In Between, then i can't remember. the women who played before me were quite talented. as my show went on, it unfolded the host of light / dark, masculine / feminine polarities. some great people in the room, including my new friend Charl (french pronunciation) who drove from Arnhem and i got to talk to him before the show on camera. another high light was interviewing Rinus before the show, who's knowledge and direct experience of chakras, auras, and the subtle energy systems of the body is pretty much unparalleled. i'm not exaggerating, he's probably the most informed authority on the subject i've ever met. very, very interesting stuff. desiree's mom was there, it was her birthday, but she refused my offer to throw a cake in her face. i chalked it up to cultural differences, and decided not be insulted. also several expat americans in attendance who used to go see shows in the mid west (hi linds!), and several Tibetan practioners, and one Cohen practitioner (the wizard woman). i don't know if she'd call herself a cohen practitioner, but any way. when the show was over, i literally walked three feet next door and went to my hotel room at the winston. now, the club was totally, utterly kick ass. the hotel, however, i had slight reservations about. i had been staying at another place about five blocks away called the Citadel, and it pretty much lived up to its name. 70 Euros a night, and really clean, very nice accomodations, big down comforters and pillows, sweet bathroom. perfect. i decided to stay at the Winston last night because it's right next door to the club, so what the hell? very convenient. however, no bathroom in the room, just a shower (you have to smoosh your shit down the drain, it's managable...), and kinda grimy carpets, the smell of hash wafting through the hallways, no phone in the room, no eye hole in the door. hmm. whatever, i decided to chance it, plus it was cheap: 45 Euros for one night. when i moved my stuff up to the room, i noticed another feature i hadn't seen before; roach traps. two roach traps on the floor. the seven year old girl in me began to chant "oh my disgusting fucking god, oh my gross fucking god(her name is Princess, and she is in fact the base line personality i regress to- not necessarily in times of real challenge or stress- like i would be fine if i were robbed at gun point, or were undergoing the last moments of my physical life- those are things i can handle. Princess comes up when something GROSS, ICKY, YUCKY happens. my wife calls me Prissy when she appears, usually about once a day or so, when i have to change a diaper or touch something in the bottom of the sink).

so, i had already paid for the room. but there i was, standing right there looking at two roach traps. there is only one reason a skanky hotel has roach traps: roaches. the thought of it sent me reeling UGHHHH YEEEEEE ARGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hee bee jee bees!!!!! i cannot even say it, i don't want to write it! you know you KNOW when you go to sleep in a place like this- you know what will happen. suddenly the whole room was re-visioned to me, it was a despicable, filthy, fetid, putrid den of squallor. i walked on tip toes as i spun around in conflict, wondering what the hell i was going to do, since it was 1:30 in the morning. i wished i had gloves, a mosquito net, disinfectant. no, screw all that, i wished i were somewhere else. for the first time on the ENTIRE tour i wished i were somewhere else. Holland is an incredibly clean, beautiful country, pretty much every where you go is suitable for the Princess, including all the toilets i've been to at the clubs. so i had been LULLED into a false sense of security. the Princess had been duped, and now she wanted the fuck out. to make matters worse, i was travelling with over 1000 Euros in cash, which is about $1300 or so, and it's not a good idea to go running through alleys of red light district by yourself in the wee hours of the morning in order to escape a roach. a roach i hadn't- technically - even seen with my own eyes. but the Princess can sense grotesquery from a mile away. here, after three days in the dead center of one the largest sex trades in Europe, i had finally found my BOUNDARY, and it was fucking ROACHES. my call at that point was simply: is it more inadvisable and dangerous to run out of the building and risk robbery, illness, and absence of shelter, or is it worse to lie in this fucking roach Oasis of a bed and go to sleep? i tried to calm the Princess down, reminding myself i hadn't actually SEEN a roach. i'd only seen roach traps. and i had ear plugs, so the roach could not crawl into my ears and lodge itself there precipitating one of those horrid, gastly trips to the Emergency Room we always hear about, where a (yyyyyyyyyyeeeeewwwwwwwwww- i am wigging out just writing this!) ROACH must be removed from someone's goddamn ear. (spit, spit, wring hands, shiver). since i had ear plugs, and hadn't seen a roach, i decided to go to bed. i was dead ass tired, haven't slept hardly at all on this tour, my body clock looks like something Dali would paint. i put the ear plugs in.

i laid down. twenty minutes of fear and paranoia later, i shut off the light and lowered my gard to the point where i nearly fell asleep. i was pleasantly drifting through the early stages of a dream when, I SHIT YOU NOT, I SWEAR TO GOD

a !@#$% ROACH crawled across my chest.

have you ever seen someone shot with a stun gun? have you ever peed on an electric fence? have you ever had the sum total wattage of all your energy systems detonate a charge of reaction so strong it changes the valence of your soul?

i shot from bed in a start that easily violated a handful of phsyical / temporal laws. people in the hotel around me continued to age at normal rates, and i briefly merged with a google of protons.

once up and out of bed, it took me about 2.3 seconds to become fully dressed and leave the room. the Princess was inconsolable, pure adrenalin floated her down the hall, past the reception desk, and out onto the street of the red light district at about 2:30 in the morning. straight over to a taxi cab, i flagged it down, got in, and went straight to hotel citadel, six or seven blocks away.

and it was full.

i went from hotel to hotel on the strip, and finally found one with an open room. not that great of a place, but after lifting the cushions, mattresses, looking behind all furniture, pulling sheets off, turning them around, lifting ceiling panels, it appeared to be 100% roach-free. not that i was going to sleep a wink, re-living the moment that wickedly disgusting insect CRAAAAWWWWLEED ACROSS MY BODY!!!!! each time the memory flashed in my head of the roach on my chest, a collossal piss-quiver shot through my body, i writhed like the tortured adolescent girl i am deep down. an unholy disbelief passed through me in waves- i can NEVER undo that, UGHHHHH EWWWWWW!!!

i layed in bed awake, punishing myself, replaying the YUCK, by 5:30am i was an sliver away from permanent Autism. i fell asleep about 6am, woke up at 8am, sat up, meditated till 9am (guess what my mandala was? yes, the ancient tibetan symbol of a ROACH CRAWLING ACROSS AN INNOCENT UNSUSPECTING MAN WHO'S NEARLY ASLEEP), then went and got a coffee and made a list of goals for the coming year.
1, never fall asleep
2, have the house hermetically sealed
3, see a shaman about how to control an entire species
4, consider a submarine as primary residence