Ice packed neatly into a pillow case.

-- Nashville, TN / 9:37pm. --

Hello.

The past week has been a rather noisome blur, but welcome just as well. So far I don't think I've seen a patch of sleep before 7am on any given morning. And we usually have to be out and on the road from between noon to 2pm to get to the next city. It seems like most of the time we're late. Which is what happens when nobody goes to bed until the sun starts crawling up into the sky. Not counting Denton, Texas, that is, which was a blistering firestorm that lasted practically all the way until noon. Out of all the tours I've done this has perhaps been the most enlightening and the most interesting. Nothing has stopped, even for a second. When I get somewhere early and have a couple of hours on my hands it feels nearly like a blessing.

Insofar I would have to say that Texas and Oklahoma have been some of the most bewildering moments of my life, and both some of the saddest and the happiest. I'm very thankful that Johnathon has such faith in me that he takes me out and just sets me loose. It'll be a dismal day next week when I have to fly back home to Oregon. While I do miss my lovely house and while I'm trying my damndest to finish my new book To Make This Easier by the end of summer, I still just don't want to go home.

Having my camera always with me and the constant shifting of terrain and the cities and the cities, is always something that makes me happy. A lot of my present traveling as well as past travels will actually be photographically present in the artwork for an upcoming record by Unwed Sailor, which will be a new studio full length and re-written retrospective of selections from their ten year history. Probably there'll be a lot of dozens of photographs I've shot over the years, so it should be awful nice to have them all funneled and corralled into one place.

The whiskey is strong tonight that I'm pretty sure I have to sign off. Angela is beautiful and when I see that little pad of paper come out when we're drinking after the shows . . . I feel better about things.

Cheers to the ghosts.

Yours,
JARET.