poodles

just read about the death of poodles, a burning bright light from my younger years. I do not know of the hows and whys, and at this point it I ssurely none of my business. The town crier, facebook being the conduit for the news, as ever. I have so much to say on the matter, and all I can really proffer is ‘shine on you crazy diamond’. She was someone I remembered seeing at the pink pony before I moved to new york and was blown away by the exene meets Lydia lunch looks. And those eyes, those eyes good stop traffic on the autobahn. You could get lost in those eyes for days or weeks or months or years. In my case, it was months. Sometime later , after I moved to Brooklyn, I would see her at Sweetwater, as she dated one of the bartenders there. She was hard not to look at across the room- the look , the eyes, the laugh, the id- and there was a lot to look at in that bar. Both of our relationships petered out, and we wound up sort of being set up and embarked a whirlwind fling a ling, that was lovely and frantic and all too brief. Two strongly suited people with darker proclivities don’t necessarily make for romantic longevity. This was the summer of 1998. She was a spirited soul, a verbal gymnast of Olympic caliber, a mental titan of inappropriate non sequiturs and deep intellectual acumen. I remember bringing her to a party that old friends were hosting, and she had charmed the room and stolen the show before we could put our bags down. I was smitten and it was obvious, it was hard not to be. I remember going to her place on Bedford avenue at the beginning and listening to classic rock, admiring her artwork and trying to peel back layers of the emotional onion. We peaked and volleyed quickly, I was off in august of that summer on tour for quite awhile, and was not able to maintain things beyond that. Presence was certainly not my strong suit in those days. I know not much beyond the fall of 1998, but I always enjoyed running into her on a night out. You knew if you did, that conversation would not be dull and an air of levity would be present after she left, with a crowd of strangers asking ‘who was that’? to which, you’d wistfully exclaim, ‘that was poodles, and she’s awesome”. I know of tragedy sometime later, with someone that I was friends with, and I knew that she had moved to Baltimore and then on to western massaschusetts. We chatted briefly on facebook, and I would invite her to shows if I were going to northhampton, never really hearing back. Life for many of those that burned brightest have since burned out. I hope that she is ok up there with heaps, and the clam and john berry(and so many others) dominating the pinball machine in the max fish of the sky, knock out beautiful and electric eyed, keeping the room light.