When all the good got good and gone, and all the bad broke free...

America is like...

There were nonsense words streaming through my mind in clusters of four, rhythmic and seemingly unrelated. I kept to myself all day, walked around the quaint bayside town, tried to maintain my opennesss and an attitude of acceptance. I tried not to panic.

Later that night, an inner voice told me with gentle authority, "unlock yourself."  That was followed by deep exhalations, maybe releasing what I'd always been holding, or some of it.

Since then, I've been opening up gradually. I think so, but it's not something I'm doing consciously.

Talked with someone today who seems to be living in a parallel situation. Lots of relatables. Similar hamster wheels.

Mark E. Smith is saying, "I'm living too long, I'm living too late".

America is like...

Went to a diner for breakfast, kind of tripped and stumbled as I was heading to the register on the way out. The young waitress said she thought she might have to catch me. Feeble oldster. I warned her that the distance you travel from being catcher to catchee is imperceptible.

Listening to music on my laptop as I try to type on it is kind of distracting. The music that's coming out of the speakers so close to my fingertips is out of synch with the music I am trying to compose. I need a speaker placed a little more distant and off to the side. Make it so, please.

America is like...

Talked to a young woman about traveling. She's been working at a Dunkin Donuts for some years now, keeps quitting to find something else, but ends up coming back. Her eyes look tired and not too hopeful. I tell her not to give up. There are other ways to do it. I tell her about the laid off middle school assistant principal I met outside a man camp in Pecos. She learned to drive a truck, got her CDL, and travels all over that way. The girl said she's been thinking about learning to drive a truck. I could see her up there, elbow out the window, trucker's cap tilted at a rakish angle, smiling down at me. Do it, I said, Do it.

Take your own fucking advice there, Hondo.

The guy you messaged with this morning, high school classmate, gave you props for the way you write. Find a way to do something with it. First figure out what that the hell that means. Most importantly, write. Even if it's this junk. Find your direction by walking, Pelegrino.

America is like...

So the Republicans are going to let this fucking tyrant get away with it. It's not the withholding of funds from Ukraine and lying about it, then empowering or coercing others to lie about it, that's the real travesty. It's the failure to put a sociopath in check when you had the means and opportunity to do so that's going to do the damage. Granting a narcissist impunity. What happens next ought to be interesting and shameful and sickening unto death.

I just saw the guy with the tattoos of the beautiful Aztec maidens on his forearms hopping in front of me with his fists up again. Meth poisoned and brain injured. Thirty-four of his 54 years spent in prison, a portion of the remainder spent being a baby and then a child, and all of the rest using meth, hiding in a basement at night, walking miles everyday to keep a little distance between him and the ones always following him.

America is like...

In Texas when you're poor and run askew of the law, you're probably going to end up filling a cell for many, many years. Found it shocking how prevalent that was. Also by the prevalence of meth and Christian radio stations, the absence of health insurance, state assistance, and necessary services. Jesus has your back, they sell you.

All that oil and gas pumping, making someone money, driving up the rents, stinking up the air, making it so you have to buy and haul your own water - if you have the means. But they're proud down there. Proud.

America is like...

Fox news and Christian radio propaganda and hardly an alternative voice to be heard. Christian radio isn't just love your neighbor stuff. It's all that spooky, titilating, mystical stuff like a lengthy lecture on the fact that angels are never actually babies or children. They're born fully formed adults. And He-Man cartoons are actually the way we have all been indoctrinated into the Occult. Moloch. Satan. The rest of it is just thinly disguised right wing politics. And the anti-abortion crusade, endlessly, like there's nothing else worth your worry. Smoke screen. There are no other voices to be heard without an active search.

I stuck with the Tejano station on the car radio. Mostly I didn't know what they were saying, so it was cool.

I'm going out tonight. A first meeting. Someone I've been talking to for awhile.

America is like...

Was thinking today about correspondence. I've always wanted to carry on a correspondence with someone somewhere across a lifetime.  Her/his shape and form has changed over the years. That person who understands you, communes with you remotely when she/he reads your words. As a young marine, I wrote a lot of letters to friends, family, fellow marines when I was deployed, girls in Western Pacific ports of call when I was stateside, a Mexican girl I danced with on Sunday afternoons (her letters translated by a guy in my platoon from East Los Angeles).

This chick likes you, Homes. 

Some of them became the correspondent for a time, but one of us usually fell away at some point for some, or for no, reason. Maybe that's what makes me want to write now. Sometimes I'm talking directly to someone, sometimes I'm talking to myself, sometimes I'm talking shit, talking nonsense, talking to whoever is listening. But I'm still waiting for my true correspondent. I guess I always will be.

Rilke said we love in order to learn how to let each other go, or something to that effect. Motherfuck.

Can't help noticing there are no birds here these days. The hummingbird feeder is still stuck to the window. Keep marching until May, they'll come back.

America is like...

W-2s in the mailbox, a call to help some people coping with the loss of part of a sports team, the silence of this house. I should sell it, buy an RV on a Sprinter chasis, and live on the road sleeping in a world of Walmart parking lots. I'd like to go out and hear some live music. I'd like to hold that woman I'm about to meet for the first time in my arms as soon as I meet her to see what that feels like without all the rituals and obstacles. Just please come casually. Jeans and sneakers for me, I said.

America is...

Went out with a lady once who was young and attractive as can be. We had some heat between us on the first date, and we liked each other in that way. On the second date, she was going to take me home. We were both anticipating it for a week. I texted her to tell her I was coming directly from a weekend visit with my son and was casually dressed. I intended that comment to take pressure off her - don't fuss, just show up.

Later she told me, she expected her man to put in at least as much energy into getting ready for the date as she did. I thought about that for a couple of minutes, feeling suddenly unwell, then shook her hand and left.

So that's it now.  It's not that I'm unwilling to work. It's that I'm unwilling to jump through hoops for a prize. I don't need the prize.

America is lke...

Alberto keeping faith with his God. He is enjoying his children and his grandchildren. He is grateful for every minute of life. Many things have tried to kill him and failed. He is my friend eventhough I don't share his faith. He's what's good about Texas. He's brown, by the way.

A brown girl there told me, with a wink, that I changed her opinion of white people. She said maybe I was brown on the inside. I told her that was mighty white of her to say.

America.

CAN

We'll always have the gerbil

I'm going to head out to try to write for maybe an hour while some heavy airplane flies low over my house and CAN plays on Spotify.

Hey you...you're losing, you're losing, you're losing, you're losing your Vitamin C.

I can't type fast enough to fastwrite and I keep stopping, looking for typos which I make a lot of. Edit another time. Go! And now I've put pressure on myself and I'm overthinking it.

Tarantino just killed off a bunch of people using an acid tripping stunt man, a TV western bounty hunter, his Italian starlet spouse, and a well trained pitbull. But, you know, he saved the neighbors.

I never realized the heiress to the Folger fortune was a social worker too. A sister.

Overall, I'm not sure it was time well spent. I liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but something about Tarantino movies since then makes me feel sort of soul-grimy. Yeah, I know, he's a genius and all, but I don't like his face and I think it signifies evil or some kind of dickishness in reality. But I do like the music he picks for his soundtracks.

I gave myself anxiety today thinking about getting disciplined, doing hard work, managing time, productivity, and taking my writing seriously. That resulted in pissing an entire day away just kind of spinning. I accomplished nothing I set out to do, but I'm doing this writing exercise now, so that counts.

I did manage to cross a line, and exercise poor judgment, by sending someone who doesn't know me like that a message through social media without an invitation to do so. I also texted a lady I went on several dates with some months back, but I was all twisted up and conflicted so, you know,  I didn't make any moves.

Now, I'm thinking I feel better.  My head is straighter and I'm feeling a little more like a live human being so I reached out to her asking her if the wonderful offer she made me once still stood, if the window hadn't closed, the door hadn't shut, that ship hadn't sailed, but it pretty much has.

She's met a nice man - which is good for her. I'm not jealous. You'd like her, I think. She's smart, funny, hard working, earnest but with a keen sense of the absurd, emotionally honest, pretty and sexy too. She'll let me know if the new guy doesn't pan out, she said. I laughed, feeling happy. Pretty happy.

The other message had to do with maybe trying to make friends with people I normally wouldn't reach out to, which is pretty much all of them. It's a good idea to do that kind of thing. I stopped doing that maybe in graduate school. Maybe 25 years ago. Making friends.

I noticed when I was in Texas that I don't like men. Well, actually that's not exactly true. I listened to quite a few men that I liked well enough, but they were telling me their stories or their troubles. Apparently West Texas doesn't have a lot of good listeners. But what I mean about not liking men was an observation I made at the little going away party. There were five women and four men. Four of the women were my co workers and the other was a friend of one of them. Three of the men were husbands and one was maybe a cousin or some overly familiar friend of one of my coworkers. They were on one end of the long table cursing a lot, talking about sports, making those overly patterned barroom laughs that irritate the shit out of me.

The women were focused on me, partly because I was leaving and they were throwing me a going away party, and partly because I had spent a couple of months living as the New Kid in Town, like the dude in the Eagles song from back in the 70's.

I got a lot of attention from those ladies, but of course it was a deadly minefield, so I did little more than smile and joke in kind. They did a lot of touching of my arms and shoulders that night, looking for the muscles they would have found a few years ago, but I decided some time ago to take them off the payroll. They gave me a stuffed gerbil and a mock rape whistle as a going away present.

The gerbil was because they said I looked like Richard Gere and they imagined I was more of a sportsman than I am. The rape whistle was to save me from them. One of the ladies phoned in from work and told one of the others to say goodbye to his sexy ass for her. So those were pretty heady times, but I didn't really get along with the men.

And I found myself thinking that it's because they at least have the appearance of not having  developed as human beings from about the time they graduated high school. I'm sure this is just a mask and somewhere inside they are more individuated. But sitting there, when the volume of their conversation overwhelmed that of the increasingly drunk ladies around me, I felt like I could write their dialogue word for word before they said it. One guy was good and drunk and feeling a little scrappy. We jousted a bit, and it ended with him telling me I didn't know how lucky I was getting to leave that fucking town. I tried to stick up for it, but he told me to leave and not to come back, and he said it with such drunken pathos that I think he actually meant it for my own good. I could see him for a minute, stuck inside a hamster wheel, warning me away.

Anyway, those people were nice to do that for me, but the whole situation got louder and messier than it needed to, and I left as the wheels were coming off. Some other stuff happened later and that part was good.

When you feel like you're a ghost, or a dead man, or old, or fading away, and someone suddenly thinks you're funny or interesting or smart or good looking or sexy - man, that's medicinal. I don't get a lot of that so I made sure to soak it up.

They will never forget you til somebody new comes along.

Yeah, well, it still happened.

Now I'm back to anonymous here at home, but that's alright because I'm better returning than I was leaving. Some strangers offered me friendship in a small town and that helped get me better. 

Just finished reading a memoir

There were many things I liked about being with you. There were also some things I did not like about being with you, but most of those things had to do with the stark fear of losing you. Now that that's occurred and passed, I've had time to think about all of those things. It's the things I like that come to mind most often.

One thing I liked very much was holding your hand.

Sometimes we'd do it when walking your dogs through your neighborhood, usually at night. Most times it just kind of happened. Not automatically, but unconsciously. Never unnoticed though.

The feeling I'd get inside was one of quiet well-being. A momentary sense that all was right. A settling down. Sometimes it was mixed with the sadness of knowing you'd be going soon.

Once, you called me after one of those long disappearances and asked me to meet you in a park to talk. To get to the park we had to cross a busy, poorly lit street. We stood on the sidewalk waiting for our chance and then sprinted the short distance across. When we stepped off the curb to run, our hands found each other. A mutual, simultaneous, unconscious act of trust. Love, I want to call it.

That night you told me that being with me made you happy. Those were my favorite words.

And then there were those times we ventured out into cold early winter mornings for fasted cardio. What was it 3:30 or 4:00 AM? The bright stars and the moon and that sacred silence - just for us. So rich. The feeling of your mittened hand in mine made me glow inside.

The memory of it still does.

Catching up

Chimes for a few minutes tonight sounded like they were coming out of the past. I stretched my body across the years to listen and to feel things properly. You gave them to me and I hung them outside the slider where we could listen to them while laying in bed together. Shrine builder.

The young woman in the Dunkin Donuts had noticed my absence and remarked upon it today. She seemed to look at me differently, directly. I asked her what she had been up to.  Not much - working, paying bills, going to school, parenting... She's the closest thing I have to a friend in the town where I live. The day after Christmas, I handed her an Amazon gift card and fled.

I mailed the title of my daughter's dead car to her today, after eating a pressed Brazilian breakfast sandwich. I'm spoiled for choice of food items here compared to West Texas. In the post office, a line of international customers waited in front of me, both men and women, between ten and fifteen of them. They were all shorter than me by at least an adult American head. They weren't spoiled for choice of food items in the places they grew up, I'm guessing.

The seafood place where I'd almost become sort of a regular, I had to stop in there for Chinese New Year. Two years in a row. I guess I have traditions now. One of my friends was working. She looked pale and exhausted. More exhausted than usual. I handed her the small red envelope. Her mouth smiled but her eyes wanted to cry. She's worked there for two years now - six days a week at least twelve hours a day. Soon, they'll move her to a restaurant in another state, closer to her children who she's been supporting from afar. Her ex is no good, doesn't help them at all. She'd like a man who is good. She doesn't care about the money. Just a man who is good and who she can trust. Now, there is no time at all for a man.

After I eat, I wonder if I should walk up and hug her. But I don't do that.

A canal is not a river

We were married, and she was pregnant, shortly after I finished graduate school. I had no money saved or plans made to embark upon either of these two journeys. I came around to it though. She was young and beautiful, and the things we did together for a while felt very good. Under the circumstances, I guess we did what we were supposed to do : just kept going as nature (perhaps) had intended.

I remember being surprised by how well the wedding photos came out. I smiled in all of them and didn't look angry or crazy. She looked beautiful in all of them too, just over half way through the pregnancy. But in the photo I remember most, there's panic in her eyes. Like maybe it hit her just then, when the shutter clicked.

A few months later, I bought our first piece of new furniture. It was a wooden rocking chair purchased for her in accordance with a fanciful vision I'd had. She never sat in it.

Observations upon returning

1.
Mailbox jammed with 29 days worth of junk mail, two Christmas cards, and a handfull of bills. Two long unwatered plants looking pekid but alive, I don't expect they'll have much to say to me for a while. Fell asleep in my own bed with pillows inferior to those at the Marriot. There's snow on the ground, but it's not very cold, and there's still some heating oil left in the tank. This place needs cleaning, repair and interior design help. I feel different from when I last lived here, maybe better. Let's try to hang onto that, eh? I'm going to see my son now.

2.
Snapshot in my head of a young man on yesterday's airplane wearing a Trump hat. Probably I looked at him too long. He looked back at me with what seemed like proud defiance, as though he believed he stood for something. I wish I could understand what that something is.

3.
Spent the day with my youngest boy who seems to have matured in some subtle way in the past month. We watched Jo Jo Rabbit together and, when it was over, he asked me if I cried. I told him studies show that people who cry in movies are more intelligent. He said he tries not to but he can feel it. I was happy at him.

Imagination is crazy...

Goodbye, Big Spring

A morning of airports after a night of goodbyes. West Texas, I found more than a few faults with you, but for the last two months you've been a haven for me from up speak, hipster fashion, vocal fry, and shitty pop music. For this, I will always be grateful.

Last night new friends took me out for an alcohol soaked goodbye. They were all women, and their husbands and boyfriends talked sports at the far end of the table and regarded me with jovial hostility and skepticism. "Make sure you come back and visit" one of them said, but I don't think he meant it.

Later, a young man approached me while I was pumping gas close to midnight and invited me out drinking with him. He remembered me from around New Year's when I helped keep him and his friends from pummeling a belligerent borracho who was asking for it. They bought me many drinks after that which probably explains why I had no memory of his face. He's a pipeline worker making good money here far from home and family.

"My teachers all said I wouldn't amount to shit in life. Now I make twice as much as they do. Maybe my Mom's even a little proud of me too. I think she might be a little. I hope she is."

42

I'd stopped paying attention to the date and missed your birthday. Crepe cake, I wonder if it's still as enticing to you as it was then. Remembering now your pastry prayer with a smile. I hope the day was a happy one for you, and that your whole life feels that way too.

Lhasa, the cashier told me.

It was in some cafe or bookstore or shop somewhere,
this music was playing, a woman was singing in
another language while holding my heart in her hand.
Arrested, I stood still and listened while the entire song
played, and when it was over, I looked at the woman
I was there with, the woman I was married to, and it was
as though she had not even heard. I felt very lonely then.

Lhasa De Sela

Haze

This one part of Southwest Texas has kind of burrowed into me. Out near Big Bend where there was no one around with those mountains in the distance. I want to walk there, climb them, sit on top in the hot, dry breeze. I want to drift like I used to in a kind of fever dream back and forth across the border between languages and worlds and find the current of magic that runs through. I want to meet that girl at the disco on Sunday afternoon, no more than a handful of people in there, sometimes only the two of us, the DJ, and the bartender. Unable to speak each other's language, we drank a little then danced and sweat together all afternoon and late into the night. At the end of the evening, she hugged me passionately, smiled happily, and went on her way. I would find her there again the next Sunday. And if I couldn't be there, I'd yearn to be.

I'm not doing that now. I miss the acuity.

The First Six Months

Drowsing Now

And like that, I am excited by something new
Visualize a new direction, see promise, potential
Let that sit for a little while, then find myself
Foolish, over-exposed, totally wrong about everything

I guess it's like the man said
Slow down, bud. It ain't worth it
Right, except it is worth it
Well, at least it's what there is left

Dreams

Sunday

Need to cut my toenails and my hair. Need to figure out three weeks of expenses and finish the book I checked out of the library with Room 207 as my mailing address. This will be my last week of living in a hotel in West Texas. I haven't seen all I'd like to here. I've not walked the desert in summer, or staggered back across the border at dawn. I haven't seen the strange lights of Marfa. Regardless, today I'm staying put.

Northeast and back again

I crossed three rivers in the dark twice today on my way to Dallas and back in order to act in my official capacity as a father. You can't protect them from everything, but you can help them sweep up afterwards. A near miss. Unbelievable luck. I can't even face what could have been. The three rivers are the Colorado, the Leon and the Brazos. I drove across some of the Texas hill country -where I was very nearly pushed off the road by an 18 wheeler - and Stink Creek Road too. 

There's a part of me that's always true

Chiste

You've been here too long when you realize
the first lady you developed a crush on (in your head)
in this town is the sister of the second lady
you developed a crush on (in your head) in this town
and the third lady you developed a crush on
(in your head) in this town is the girlfriend of the first.

This is put into perspective for you when a friend
of the gay man that you're talking with at the bar
comes in and asks him if you're his Dad. 

On The Road Again

He travels the state
however he can
bringing his music
hospital to shelter
group home to bus station
mission to halfway house

You call it whatever you want to
He calls it being on tour
Long may you ride, amigo
Keep on singing

Embrace the Suck

Some other bug must have hit me when I traveled on the weekend.
Left work early with a sudden total loss of motivation.
Didn't feel at all like flirting with the waitress at my regular eating place.
My son's at home struggling to find a hook for an essay about climate change.
That sucks.

Monday

1.

Just before sunset, I was walking in San Angelo State Park when I came upon what appeared to be a cow with wide horns grazing among the mesquite. It looked thin and somehow wild to me.  I also knew she was a cow despite the horns. She was neither fearful or comfortable, but remained wary. As I watched her, something else pulled at my attention. I shifted my gaze a few feet, and found the bull, standing tall and facing me squarely.

Message received.

I spoke quietly and walked backward slowly. He did not advance. As dusk settled onto us, and I faded into a comfortable distance, two calves emerged from the brush sprinting around in a circle, playing together.

2.

He walked the 150 miles from Fort Worth to Abilene over three days and nights. Some would say the journey took place during a manic episode, and that he would have to be psychotic to undertake such a venture. I told him I admired him for it. He carried no water and did not stop to sleep. He said it was only him and God out there, and God showed him the way.

I didn't tell him this, but I felt ready to embark immediately.

3.

Someone gave me a copy of the daily local newspaper today. I glanced at the headline while driving. It was the agenda for an upcoming city council meeting. One of the items listed was "Sanctuary City", and I found myself surprised that such a progressive discussion was underway here. Upon closer examination, I saw that it was a proposal to become a Sanctuary City for the Unborn. Now that figures. I started thinking about some of the poor young Post-Born I'd  seen in town that the Council seemed a bit less concerned about. My thoughts went sour from there.

On the next page of the newspaper, my horoscope read:

"It is the aim of your side to suppress evil and uphold the virtuous. The aim of the other side is exactly the same. The only differences are differences of definition. Of course, that is everything".

San Angelo

Found respite in a good place along el rio Concho.
Water is life, and there seemed somehow a higher quality of it here.
I was welcomed and refreshed.

The other story is that I drank or ate something that disagreed
And became sick. I spent most of the night awake and uneasy.
Driving out, I could not help but see the fields and trees littered with plastic.

Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

1.

What I'm doing is not complaining or bemoaning,
I'm just sitting down and writing what there is now, and
sometimes letting it take me where it wants to. It's neither, and both,
a documentary and a fictionalized account of some portion of somebody's life.

The housekeeper, now, is knocking rapidly on the door.
"Housekeeping" she says.
"Yeah" I reply.
"Do you need anything?"
"I'm ok."

The housekeeper is knocking urgently upon my door.
"Housekeeping" she whispers desperately.
"Yeah" I reply, opening the door.
"I need something" she says - breathless, terrified - falling into my arms.
"You're ok" and I lock the door behind her.

There's snow on the car windshields - a big event. I'm the only one sitting in the hotel lobby drinking coffee looking out. The new girl who sets up breakfast is a little bored, she told me, no one is coming down. She is young, early 20's, open and unselfconscious. Her openness kind of embarrassess me, makes me ashamed for noticing her womanhood. I change myself into an older man - fatherly, harmless. She tells me she works five hours and then she's out of here. I go back to staring out the window.

She is sweeping to kill time. The sound of the bristles against the floor is gentle and slow. And then, for a moment, we are in bed. My head is at rest upon her belly. Her finger tips move through my hair and along my scalp with the same gentle rhythm as the broom. Her touch, right now, is everything.

She is sweeping to kill time. The sound of the bristles against the floor is gentle and slow. And then, for a moment, I am propped upright in a hospital bed. The nurse passes a comb slowly through my hair and along my scalp with the same gentle rhythm as the broom. Her touch, right now, is everything.

She is sweeping to kill time. The sound of the bristles against the floor is gentle and slow. She is quietly singing along to a country love song playing overhead. She stops to drink juice, and after her last swallow, makes a small "ahh".

I ride the elevator to the second floor thinking that you really have to starve to appreciate what love tastes like.

2.

I still want to be the man who found you walking through the city with just one shoe. He was kind enough to notice, bold enough to approach you, generous enough to go and buy you a new pair.

You are seated there on a bench waiting. I am crouching before you unboxing the shoes. I offer the first one. With slight hesitation, you place your toes inside. We move together in opposing directions, my whole body tingling, you carefully sliding your foot into the shoe, and I carefully sliding the shoe onto your foot. Everything is silence. Everything inside me stops.

Awe.

Love?

I must be dying. Or flying? I'm burning. No, I'm soaring.

I'm alive - entirely.

I don't ever want to be anywhere else. Immediately, I understand I must never lose this.

Oh no. I'm lost.

We might both be suddenly embarrassed by the intimacy of the moment, like the time I walked you out with the singer overheard singing "ohh-oh, your sex is on fire", and my heart pounding so heavy and slow in my chest.

Or maybe we'd both laugh giddily at the silliness of the situation, the sudden unexpected closeness.

Perhaps we'd be stunned, looking into each other's eyes with seriousness, not understanding exactly what is coming into being.

Maybe you'd see my love and quickly avert your eyes, resorting to convention and politeness, thanking me for my efforts, offering me money, hurrying on your way, leaving me to watch after you long, long after you'd gone out of sight.

However it turned out, I'd probably remain a prisoner of that moment forever.  Like I am to a few now.

I Guess It's Not For Me

Started feeling anxiety climbing up from inside me
so I went out into the street which was dark and deserted,
most of the buildings were vacant, but I still felt that I had to
straighten my neck and look up in order to breathe. Something
about this place is closing in on me despite all the open space.

Listened to the local comedians again, raunchy, depressing
and waited to sing a song, but my vocals ended up being too loud for the
understated music so it was really 5 or 6 minutes of me just yelling into a microphone
in front of a room full of strangers. A big Mexican clapped afterward, and I was fist bumped
by three guys wearing their MC colors but I only felt a little better. One of the drag queens
smiled sideways at me - politely.

Alone, I am, and feeling it hard tonight.

Drive back to the hotel, there's a number I could call, but I don't want that either.
I lay there listening to the gurgling in my guts, the AC coming on and shutting off,
waiting for something to shift until, very slowly, it becomes time to go back to work.

These are like an old man's nights.

 Already. 

Adjustment

I left that place a little deflated, I guess. Almost forgot to send the review information in to get an extension for the one I haven't even met yet, still sick and laying low after three days. I don't know much about coming off meth, but she makes me think it's not much fun. I get it done with two minutes in the business day to spare, and then talk to a girl who is still very much a girl, except with ruined teeth, and shattered trust, and enough self-destruction thrust into her from so ridiculously young that she might not live to see adulthood. Trying to tell her to just rest here a few more days, in safety. And then in my office, the guy from prison who doesn't hold it together so well when confronted with too many variables tells me loudly that I'm in on it too.

"See? Yellow! Red!! Blue!!! STOP FUCKING WITH ME." 

Ok, ok, ok.

Outside, the sun is out and it's in the 60's with a gentle breeze. I'm going to take a walk in the park. I'm not going to my co-worker's house party even if it seems rude and ungrateful. I just don't want anymore tonight, alright?

So I walk up the steep section of road through the cacti and into the sun, graceful in it's nightly decent.

"Yes, you're right"  I say to the desert, "that isn't the whole world." 

I have to remember that. Sometimes I forget.

Forty five minutes of walking, watching the round moon rise over brittle high desert vegetation, makes me better.

Why thank you, Ma'am.

She said, "It takes a strong man to pull off such a pretty colored shirt."

GG with G

Good natured argument with a young man from Houston about guns. He and his buddy wearing company jackets - oil field guys, but indoor workers I'm betting. We compare and contrast Massachusetts and Texas norms and gun laws. He argues that the recent Texas church shooting was foiled by armed parishioners who stopped the friendly body count at two. That's true I say, but where I'm from we don't have to hide undercovers in the pews. Play it out my friend, your way is an endless arms race. Think Afghanistan - everybody's always had a gun there, since there were guns. Warlords, tribalism, endless petty war for king of the shit heap. No thanks. Evolve.

Patients

Caught a bug in the hospital, probably from all the hand shaking that's occurred in the last few days with the post holiday influx of people in crisis needing constant reassurance that I am doing something to make their lives better.

Crack

Golden Globes film awards are on tonight
And I was half watching it because I was avoiding
Going down to the lobby to use the fitness room
You know the pressure you've been feeling?
That creeping dread whispering
Everything's probably not ok
Well, they're feeling it too.

Kiss

Found myself kissing you, slowly, in a dream during a nap today. That's never happened before. Surprised to see you, I began to awaken. I didn't try to hold onto you this time. Just kept kissing you slowly until you were no more.

Sustenance

Was glad to see the Dachshund couple back out and about this morning
Making their dumpster rounds with a third little feller who appeared
To be some kind of Chihuahua mix

Fed a couple of grackles some crackers in the Starbucks parking lot
The male was either too cool, too scared, or too dumb to pick up on what was going on
Until the female, who didn't need any coaxing, grabbed the first one

Fat stray cat under my rental car
In the hospital parking lot
I talked to it the whole walk across

Tonight I'm meeting a lady for dinner
These scavengers will be on my mind
I will try not to tip my cards

I'm no longer afraid to dance...

A Small Town Way Out Here

One:

When you're not from here, not tangled in the webs of local interrelationships, people tell you things. Sometimes they tell you deeply personal things, about themselves or about other people.
Sometimes you wish they would not tell you some of these things.
Sometimes they tell you things you are not sure how to hold for them.
Sometimes they tell you things you want to act upon,
     but to do so would shift you forever out of this strange anointed role and
     tangle you hopelessly in the intricate network of webs they themselves are tangled in.

Two:

You talk with one person who was born and raised here, raised her children here, was educated and became a professional here - smart, capable, hard working. What is it you like here that made you stay? She answers with a plan to move to Dallas one of these days. There's nothing to do here, she says. Nothing.

We could go to work in the oil fields  - the ones that have ruined the quality of the air, the look of the land, and the purity of the water under ground. The fields we who live here do not want or profit from.

We could huff spray paint; shoot, smoke, or snort meth; get blackout drunk and beat the living shit out of our wives who are too scared to leave and can't even imagine there is anywhere else to run to. We could blame the blackout for what we do when we sneak into our little baby daughter's room at night.

We could rendezvous with the handsome man across town who doesn't care that you're married and doesn't talk much, get our heads and necks tattooed, drive our muscle cars up and down the same mile of street for years and years. We could shoot ourselves when our girlfriend finds another.

We could smell all them snakes at the roundup. Yessir, bet you didn't ever imagine rattlesnakes stink. We could stay up nights trying to save our brother from his appetites, which we've been doing all our lives, as strong Christian men doing the best we know how and trying not to cry.

We could go to church and listen to Christian radio all goddamn day and night with at least four Christian stations on the dial to choose from. We could marry our high school sweetheart at about nineteen years old with no more plan than that.

We can live one moment at a time in this great big wide open - a vastness contained in a baby food jar - and do our best not to succumb to suffocation. We can talk to the stranger for a while. He's got therapeutic eyes.

Three:

I think I would like to live out there somewhere, alone, away from the oil fields and the gas smell where the air is dry and quiet, and winter mornings are cold on the cement walls and floors. Mesquite, cactus and sage. The wind will turn one of those old wooden windmills that power the cistern, and it's creaking will be like some kind of mantra to me. Gradually, living with the cycles of nature will make of me a holy man. When I come into town, and you should chance to speak with me, I will say something quietly to you while looking in your eyes, and you will never forget that moment as long as you live. Should I have occasion to lay beside you, I will leave every cell of your body feeling loved, and you will never be lonely another day in what remains of your hard life upon this earth.

I will not be that desiccated old man living in his own filth out there far from town in squalid quarters with no art or beauty or meaning, contemplating his pistol in a daily sunrise ritual, head spent mostly in a plastic bag sprayed with ether, girlfriend cut out of a magazine and pasted to the wall with something unseemly.  I will not be thus.

Residuals and resolutions

This task represents the completion of day one of the three things I wanted to do more consistently every day in the coming year. My mouth is already getting dry. Please don't make me gag with bland, dry consistency. Let's not derail this thing already, ok? Anyway...

One.
She was Latina and big - all curves and glitter and make up - a sexy Christmas tree in overdrive. I couldn't help watching her dance, and she showcased her dancing, loving having the room's attention. After the countdown, she came over and pressed her breasts against me, her eyes all warmth and her smile, loving kindness. Some kind of blessing.

Two.
The Texas Christian church that hosted the most recent church shooting had a trained band of armed parishioners intermingled in the crowd. In fact, that is exactly what they credit the low body count to (two good guys, one bad guy). The shooter with his fake beard and glasses had a shortened shotgun under his coat. I wonder if it's that new Mossberg with that badass little knob for a handle? One of the parishioners who was killed, a deacon, was a black man. The shooter was a white man and not a member of that church. But what I'm really thinking about is what it must be like to be sitting in Church trying to commune with your god and to think love and brotherhood toward your fellow man while you're scanning the crowd wondering who you might have to pop. Aren't you, on some level, anticipating it? Maybe even hoping for it? That must present a quandry in your prayer life.

Texas, man. The guy reading the news on my car radio the morning after the shooting said the shooter had "been been taken out with a single clean headshot" by one of the parishioners. Now that's pretty wild west.

Three.
Two men walk into the Texas Cajun. Vanessa, the waitress, greets them. They know each other. One of the men roles his eyes. "You fixin' to take a punch" she said. "New year, new me. And I'm about kickin' yo ass".

Every town was Paris, Every day was Sunday, Every month was May