#199

#199, Greenwich Village, NYC

There's something very removed about sitting in a lush back garden in Portland, Oregon while contemplating this panel of stained glass on a funeral home on Bleecker Street in New York City. The architectural half of my brain has entered a temporary state of suspended animation. I may as well be staring at a fossilized nautilus, trying to explain carbon dating.

I'm being lulled by the smells of lavender, sage, and nectar. I'm listening to the sounds of water trickling in a fountain and my band mates strumming songs on the ukelele and unpacking groceries. We're staying in a beautiful empty bungalow and enjoying a day off on our very busy cross-country tour. My brain is not just on Pacific Time but on Pacific Pace, that is to say, a bit more lackadaisacal than usual. But if I open up my laptop and tune in to the wi-fi (signal name: "Suck it Trabeck"), I can still hear, ever so faintly, the music of the blogosphere. I can see the approaching milestone of 200. And I just wanted to check in to let you know I'm still here, number collecting and font hunting in cities and bars all across the country, from the morning diner coffee to the free PBR's at night.

Urban funeral home architecture may be worlds away from a green, overgrown garden, but so goes the sequence. Like racking up nightly gigs and ticking off towns and cities on a map, posting numbers in order is a project that has only a certain degree of certainty. You can't plan too much of it in advance. There's bound to be odd surprises along the way. Maybe there's a nice yin and yang to it all: life and death mixed in all together; nature and technology mingling harmoniously. I don't know. For now, there's a singalong I need to join.