the end

the end is here, ninjas.
the end of july.
the end of vacation-time house living.
the end of convenient contact with all ya'll, even.
the end of the line.

that makes a new beginning inevitable.
tomorrow isn't just august, already;
tomorrow will be the first morning we wake up in the new hottness.
woodsly goodness, plus neighbors.
it's sort of a throwback for us.
our normal selling point on locations is their remoteness.
it saves us a lot of late night visits from the authorities.
heavily armed berserker barbarian battle-beasts,
blazing burly bonfires and late night hard-styles?
c'mon.
what i mean is:
we don't usually mix well with anyone who isn't a warrior poet.
sadly, how many worthy battle bards are ever even there out there, y'know?
but, i'm confident that we'll make an A+ effort.
between the chainsaw logging,
cordwood stacking,
and general loud and hard moving magic,
we'll probably go completely unnoticed as we sneak into residency...
i'll be sure to start flying our somali pirate aids awareness gay pride prayer flags.
that'll encourage a crystal-clear 'hey, welcome to the area, neighbors!' vibe
out into the cul-de-sac,
for sure.
there goes the tranquility, kids.
along with the neighborhood.
we're doin' our part to keep property values down.
put that in you mil-rate and chug it.

this is it.
never quiet, never soft...

done and done...

okay,
we're homeowners, for real.
all the way now, and have assumed ownership,
and starting tomorrow we begin inhabiting our epic Folk Life Fortress.
narrow victories are still victories.
y'know what they call the dude who barely squeaks ahead
crossing the finish line a millisecond before his competitors?
...the winner.
it's so true, too.
to the victors go the spoils,
and the soul-crushing mortgage payments.
as my homeslice mitch wrote by way of congratulations:
"welcome to your new master, the bank of monthly ass-rape."
ouch.
must be a sperm bank, i guess...
of course,
i'm not sure it's actually ass-rape, per se,
since i signed up for it;
on about two hundred thousand pieces of paper....

i guess there was some behind the scenes drama, too!!
scandalous.
while we were home stressin' about the situation,
all kinds of 'are-you-kidding-me' action was unfolding.
i mean, real deal human conflict,
with hard-style law enforcement involvement an' all.
lawyers were callin' realtors,
police were ruining everybody's good time,
and ex-husbands and wives were hatin' on each other.
i was mostly waitin' around on the last day of vacation....
fortunately for jess and i,
we arrived this morning at OUR house,
and it was 2 legit to mutha-lickin' quit.
that's right.
OUR house.
sooooooo,
tomorrow, we're officially done with our vacation,
and woodsly goodness residents in perpetuity.
that means that all the old and busted doo-doo buttery disasters,
inside the house and out,
need to be addressed.
where my handy-mans at?
i need painters, scrapers, scrubbers,
scoopers, plumbers, carpenters,
and assorted good-vibe infusers.

and,
we'll have no phone or internet for a week.....
real life is looming.
daruma has his other eye filled in.
we've got a bucket of cleaning products
and i expect to use 'em up in the first two days.
dirt dirty, dirtiness.
i'm a mess with home improvement;
never quiet, never soft....

oh, c'mon.....

yeah!
so, we closed on our first home, sorta.
i'm serious.
totally serious.
we read through two million pages of paper,
wrote checks that removed the entire summer's income from the bank,
and signed and initialed all the x's and dotted lines.
but did we get the keys to the castle?
F* no.
turns out,
most mortgage lenders are of the personal opinion that
you just can't buy a house that the seller hasn't moved out of.
i know.
it's been a months long process,
with at least a four weeks of pretty definite plans,
so obviously,
you don't start packing a single solitary possession,
until the day OF the closing,
around 9 a.m....
nice.

dear secret universal plan,
you got me again.
good one.
love,
xoxoox,
albie.

it's never easy,
but what ever is?
it's also
never quiet, never soft...

the deep breath before the plunge.

holy sh!t.
at one o'clock this afternoon,
jess and i go over to the title service company,
where we'll be meeting with many business suited individuals,
to finalize all the big-time grown-up serious real-deal action.
the Folk Life & Liberty Fortress is really happening.
we're actually buying a mutha-uckin' house......
...and making it a home, too.
that's some big busy business, for sure.
so now,
in the early shirley mornin' hours,
we're waitin'.
patiently, even,
for the confirmation calls from our mortgage broker, pat jones;
our totally kickass realtor, rich johnson;
and whomever the F* else needs to buzz us about whatever's clever.
we've got a walk-through to walk through,
and some burly banking to balk a bit at,
but otherwise,
today is the day.
and it's a really good one.

this bit of personal pride brought to you in part
by the woodsly goodness,
the tatzappin' vacation concession of mt. washington,
the number eleven,
and generous contributions from the secret universal plan.
gratitude, ya'll.
word;
never quiet, never soft...

from scratch

what the F* is jar sauce?!
that was yesterday's most winningest favorite quote, my ninjas.
referring to some non-italian's best effort at makin' a gourmet gravy for their rigatoni,
with ketchup and oregano,
because they had no jar sauce!
jar sauce!?! what the F* is jar sauce?!
and ketchup?!!!
my nana would whoop your candypants ass if she heard that noise.
there's so much wrong with that crap culinary course anyway;
but to hear the distress in my buddy's aunt's voice,
recalling the affrontery to from-scratch foodstuffs,
decades after the incident,
i had to remember what it means to doo-doo the really real sh!t.
box mix and jar sauce?
oh, HELL no, ya'll.
put that instant doo-doo buttery box mix back on the shelf.
never mind all that 'just add water',
that's weak sauce,
in SO many ways, too.
i endorse and support taking a leading role in your own life.
that means a little extra effort in all the little easy things throughout the day.
every day.
even eatin' treats requires that active participation.
i'm not sayin' we should all spend seven hours in the kitchen before breakfast,
and it's even plausible that that luxury pasta sauce
in the specialty section of the grocery store
just may be good enough to hide in a lasagna,
but for a stand-alone red gravy,
you gotta sautee, simmer, and stew.
i'm sayin',
my sugarlovely baby-yeah ladyfriend makes a mean sauce, mutha-uckas.
that's a fact.
it's the difference between a keeper and keepin' lookin'...
word.
i'm rockin' shout-outs to home cooks who get busy from scratch.
participating in the creation of their own sustenance.
that goes for gardeners growing their own goods, too.
to all the fresh slicers, dicers, mincers, parers, corers, peelers, and preparers;
keep keepin' those mashed potatoes lumpy.
all ya'll reppin' the coarse arts,
keep reppin' that roughness...

homemade is just plain better.
that's what's poppin'.
homestyle home run home cookin'.
by hand and from scratch, each and every batch.
flavorful as F*!
not just in my mouth, either,
but when i eat it, i wanna flippin' taste it;
never quiet, never soft.

emotions...

mixed and otherwise,
emotions have been the name of the game.
lately, over at the tatzappin' blastoff studio,
when it comes to pickin' out some pictures to zipzap up,
folks have been runnin' to one extreme or the other.
completely meaningless images are abundant, and that's cool,
but so are the intensely personal portrayals of milestones and memories.
the semi-important as-long-as-it-looks-cool stuff is in short supply.
i'm sayin',
either the barbed wire hot fire is gettin' spit,
and it's one-two-three, gimme some money,and get lost,
OR
the deep-wounded heart strings are plucked up;
which makes for some seriously moist-eyed skin sessions.
today saw a batch of both kinds of clients,
and for once, as surprising as it turned out to be,
i actually gave a sh!t about the sad stories...
probably because it actually was congruent to connectivity and communication,
warrior poetry, and keeping it real.
i did a portrait today,
which isn't that big or unusual a deal,
except,
i tattooed my friend frank's face on his father's arm,
as frank recently passed away after being pretty sick for a bit.
i even rocked out a little turtle and banner combo for his fiancee.
i'd been tattooing frank for years up here,
and gotten to know the guy for the stand-up kick-ass awesome fella he was.
accordingly,
he amped up the studio to his peoples back home,
who rolled up from somewhere in massachussetts for just the afternoon,
just to have the tattoos done by their boy's artist.
the whole family came up to support each other an' that,
and i couldn't have found for a nicer group of folks to span time alongside on a muggy monday,
or even any other day, for that matter.
holy mutha-uckin' smokes, right?
i was compelled to behave like a regular human being, even;
and that was a new experience for me, at least.
word up, my ninjas, that was some really real business.
add in some good old italian moms and pops,
a few traded kitchen tips, and secret recipes for pasta fagioli,
and a ton of hugs and kisses afterwards,
and a seriously intense experience resulted.
lasting human connections.
not usually my strong suit.
today, though,
today was the day.
i am grateful for the time i have been given,
and for those i span time alongside;
never quiet, never soft...

the last sunday in july.

y'know about the renaissance, yeah?
the rebirth of art and learning and culture and all that.
that whole stretch of time was spanned so damn freshly,
with some pretty F*d-up duders gettin' pretty F*n' F*-d up;
whilst managing to produce a prolific patch of progress,
and several museums worth of artistically exposed genital allegory.
those dudes got busy.
really busy, in fact.
and in between drunken homosexual orgies and swordfights,
they all still managed to live some pretty elaborate and full lives.
not that homosexual orgy swordfights aren't fulfilling, yall,
c'mon, obviously that much stabbin' is brutally battle bardsly...
the key was to be dope at a whole pile of stuff,
and therefore master multiple forms of hottness.
and that multiple-hottness mastery, over time , gave usage to the term
renaissance man.
which doesn't really apply to the rebirth of anything anymore,
or to duders who invent, write, and get syphilis either;
(with the exception of ben franklin)
it's just another 'nother other 'nother way of determining the just be dopeness.
because,
if you're doo-dooin' every single thing you have to, want to, and need to,
and it's all really happening as hard and fresh and loud as it can,
then,
it stands to reason that your standing as a worthy
real-life-living warrior of bold and fortunate flavor
is in assuredly mutha-uckin flippin' full efffect.
that's the truth.
you just gotta represent that renaissance resonance, ya'll.
i know i do a LOT of sh!t,
and i certainly like to think i'm better than just barely
fair-to-middling at more than most of it.
that may just be wishful thinking and conceited horn-blowing,
i mean, really, after all,
i haven't invented anything awesome or even gotten siphylis.....yet,
but i'm sure feelin' more like a swordfightin' arthur-maker these days.
me and my peoples have a lot going on over here;
impending homeownership (cross your fingers, ninjas),
and busy-as-F* tatzappin' weeks,
and a financial maelstrom of banks, checks, lenders and sellers,
and cooking and reading and writing.......
i could use a quick squeeze of rebirth, ya'll.
less naked, and wet, and pink, and helpless than the first one;
but rather a righteous reawakening of exactly what it is
that i actually LIKE about what i'm doing all the time.
renaissance man?
maybe not.
berserker bararian battle-beast?
time-spanning life-living warrior poet?
move-makin' money-takin' rump-shakin' flamboyant Folk Life founding father?
hell yeah, mutha-uckas.
just be dope at what you're doin';
never quiet, never soft.....

a busted pile of a day...

accountability.
that's some grown-up sh!t, my ninjas.
admitting when you're wrong.
owning up to you own mistakes, missteps and missed missions.
taking resposibilty for your actions and their outcomes.
it isn't any kind of easy,
but it's some true-life really real test-of-adulthood action.
it's really just another variation on just being dope,
or failing that,
F*ing right off....
sometimes, being dope is really mutha-flippin' hard,
but acknowledging your own fallibilty is even harder.
mistakes don't define you,
unless you let 'em.
rather,
how you proceed after F*n' up is even more important.

miscommunication is twice as awful to professional wordsmiths.
that's the 'uckin' truth.
and those miscommunicated misunderstandings, ya'll,
when occurring in the tattoo world, are the supremely worst kind.
the absolute worst ever....
full-blown stomach-sick, hot ears, panic attack horrible.
sometimes,
underarticulated ideas constitute a minor mishap,
or a semi-permanent problem.
making it right, however,
while almost inconceivably more humiliating,
and cripplingly hubris destroying,
and frustrating for everyone,
and a complete bummer, to boot...
is the mark of a truly competent communicator.
the good news is that while culpability is split down the middle
between the getters and the 'zappers,
there's almost always a way to figure it out.
if at first you can't be dope,
but F*ing right off doesn't appeal to your ass either,
well,
you better turn up the magical medicine magic to eleven,
and get busy doin' the right thing.
whatever that entails.
that's accountability.
and accountability is manly, b!tches.
that may even explain my sexy beard, huh?
you may have already guessed as much,
but there's some non-situationally specific personal narrative here.
suffice to say my manlines is in full-blown overdrive over here.
and i think there's a happy ending.
at least, i feel like there should be one.
to err is human, they say,
and to accept it, improve on it,
and bring the 'uckin' thunder
is barbarian battle-beastly.
right or wrong, i'll take responsibilty,
every single time;
never quiet, never soft....

high tension.

so,
we're constantly overbooked at work.
it's not exactly a bad thing,
but it sure is stressful.
always running behind means staying late,
ruining dinner plans, getting all tense,
and tatblasting as hard as you can until your thumbs go numb.
add in the 'awesome' ideas some folks have,
and it almost makes me want to go back to bein' a fancy little baby-bop blaster again.
almost.
y'know the dudes;
only zappin' their own styles and reppin' the spoiled brat attack.
that business is not the truth.
at least not the really real rural honest to woodsly goodness truth...
still,
there were two wang-danglin' weiner guys in the studio today.
and that can be some ugly truth.
i swear, ya'll.
the barbed wire armband crowd is out in force, too.
it's like that movie gremlins or something,
and someone must've gotten 'em wet, i guess.
times are happening.... strange ones, even.
i've done a whole ass-ton of ass-whoopin' tatzappin' these last few weeks.
i'm tired, ya'll.
what i need is a Folk Life & Liberty fortress to call home,
to lay my head down and hang my hat.
that daruma with the one eye i'm wishin' on must be listening,
because we got some turbo tasty tidbits of good good news today.
it looks as if the secret universal plan is decoding itself into a fresh saga
of berserker barbarian battle-beastly thunder and lightning.
by august we should be relocated, again,
and this time,
it could be the folk liveliest scenario yet.
i need a vacation from this vacation,
and i sure as sh!t need a break from this breakneck ballyhooing tatzappin'.
times, yall, like i said;
times are happening;
never quiet, never soft....

the stillness.

it's pretty quiet at 5:30 a.m. in the woods.
almost no noisiness even makes it inside...
yeah,
there's a bunch of b!tchsap birds bleating,
but otherwise,
it's tranquility all the way;
my kids are back home in weak-sauce connecticut,
one of our dogs, hamden, is at a sleepover with jess's sister,
and the rest of my peoples are asleep, snugly, in their bedrooms.
it's just me and the noisy-ass old refrigerator,
watching the sunrise,
and making moves.



ya'll remember daruma?
he's a mad old indian meditater,
and the founder of zen buddhism in asia.
he's also, and maybe more even widely,
best known for being protrayed as a red wish doll shaped like an urn.
(i have a daruma tattyblasted on my knee)
the way the dolls work is:
you fill in just one of his empty doll-eyes when you make a wish,
and when that jammie-jam comes true,
you reward the little hoppity-blop by filing in the other one.
i got one the other day,
and he's givin' me the 'one-eyed willy' stink wink right now.
i'm hopin' to fill that second peeper in a.s.a.p.,
as i really need some wishes fulfilled....
vacation is almost over,
and we're waiting on all the last minute stressful final forms, functions,
failsafes, and foundations to doo-doo all the factfinding
and funding founding and financing for our Folk Life fortress.
that type of real-world adult activity will have you up and about,
sleeplessly appreciating the sunrise on a thursday morning, for sure.

these days, my ninjas.
i'm sayin';
never quiet, never soft...

car rides and pizza nights.

harvest, maple, and the cucch joined me
for a very dark, very rainy road trip,
across the kancamagus highway's narrow and twisty mountain passes.
jess manned the fort and held it down on the homefront last night,
just so we could come home to a few delicious slabs of homemade pizza.
that sh!t is really darn tasty, ya'll.
but, meanwhile back in the hills;
we had a specific misson in mind when we left,
and we executed our plan with diligent determination.
the girls finally, after years of woodsly visitation,
saw a mutha-uckin' big, brown, lanky, skanky, awesome
and in all other ways impressive MOOSE.
without natural predators in the mountains of new hampshire,
(besides massachussetts s.u.v.s)
moose pretty much just sit there on the side of the road,
munchin' up wet leaves and not givin' a flyin' F*.
as a bonus to their indifference,
we were about two feet away from a young cow,
for a whole chunk of minutes,
until other carloads, full of pantloads of waterabies showed up,
just to horn in on and scoople up our magic.
even those doo-doo buttery ruiners couldn't diminish the freshness, though.
it's kinda terrific, y'know, watching these kids flip out
over the jam-packed treats and tricks of the woodsly goodness.
another 'nother generation of Folk Life livin' is in the fixin', my ninjas.
on the way back, we rolled up on an even bigger beastly browser,
but he escaped into the woods before the girls could glimpse him.
whatever.
their first black bear appeared after bread and puppet,
their first moose before pizza night....
if i had to pick out a perfect ending to an amazing visit
with two very rad little people,
that'd be it.
thanks a big fat bunch for lookin' out, secret universal plan.
never quiet, never soft....