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.
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.
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