Wednesday, November 28, 2007

In honor of Wheaton 1991-?



That's Wheaton back there behind us. A little four-door Nissan from 1991. That's Rebekah I have my arm around and a jade plant on the roof that she gave me. We're heading through the Canadian stretches in the Spring of 2005. Rebekah was struggling for sanity down in Antarctica working with a bunch of quasi-scientist frat student types on that big chunk of ice. That was the year Antarctica split in two, one big crack moving across the frozen continent. I guess the continent is a pair of gigantic islands shaped similar to two lungs alongside one another, though you'd never know land to be beneath except for the rocks showing on the peaks of the Transantarctic Mountains. I imagine the crack running that line of water beneath, separating the two. Nonetheless a significant occurence; certainly more interesting than Earnest Shackleton and his dummies, but maybe not as much as that baby Emperor penguin in Happy Feet dancing to his heart's content.

While all this was happening I was working three food service jobs in Portland, Maine... struggling with two somewhat undefinable relationships, smoking and drinking copiously yet running and otherwise exercising like a madman. There were unaccounted sleepovers, walking pneumonia, depression and confusion, longings like a lost student, and too many Japanese authors' words in my head (likened to the Germans or Russians if you ask me). Danger for the fragile soul mind you; rationalization of the morbid, beauty in sacrifice.

That's around the time I found Wheaton. She was abandoned for a year in this cleared space in the northern woods of Maine. A red Sentra left to the elements of rain and snow, the salty damp of the coastline. Beneath her hood a dead battery, the engine block rusted and flaked reminding me of barnacles on a pier or side of a humpback. The owner was an estranged adulterous husband; the seller was his wife. She signed over the paperwork and sold it for a steal, partially out of spite.

I wanted to get back out west and put together a plan with Rebekah (who had similar wishes) on some scratchy sat phone connection, maybe distorted by polar magnetism or some such thing. She flew in to Philly and connected to Portland and then we set out. Wheaton saw the provinces, almost every damn one, the Great Lakes. She came down into more G-D fearing country, ran the line of the Pacific and inland to the western states. My wheels, my salvation, my demise, my ridiculous car-love and growing superstitions. She never criticized my alcoholism, my compulsions, half-baked plans and erratic heartbeat... never put down my passengers, or refused a state of place or mind, only delivered me safe and sound and often confused, but otherwise cheaply traversed by high mpg. Oh bless that damn car.

I can only imagine her breaking heart now on the houseside curb, with her replacement just feet away. A 2003 Toyota Echo named Cubby with power-steering, unheard of to the likes of Wheaton.





Sunday, November 11, 2007


Little surfer little one
Made my heart come all undone
Do you love me, do you surfer girl
Surfer girl my little surfer girl

I have watched you on the shore
Standing by the ocean's roar
Do you love me do you surfer girl
Surfer girl surfer girl

Friday, November 09, 2007

Wandering where the lions are.

This one starts in Oakland on a cool, damp evening. We're hitting flat tennis balls over the net to all stretches of the court. Only five o'clock and the sun's going down behind a thick blanket of clouds over San Francisco. And up in the hills the houselights are watery in a lighter haze of gray. I'm like a dog on my side of the net, the dog that's been waiting for his owner all fucking day long... eager and upset and frantic. I'm running after every ball, running it back to the fence ten armlengths away. There's something inside of me that's trying to get out; I'm trying to wear it down. I smile and sweat awaiting the next ball, as if to wag my tail. I've done this before.

I think this is the night I beat it, but I had to go through me to get there... face to face. And so I picked up a wicked cold, a night soon after four blankets over the bed and I'm shivering delirious and half-awake, at war with some invisible aspect. And in the day my skin burns as I walk down the street and this facetious National song in my head.

I'm put together beautifully
Big wet bottle in my fist, big wet rose in my teeth
I'm a perfect piece of ass
Like every Californian
So tall I take over the street, with highbeams shining on my back
A wingspan unbelievable
I'm a festival, I'm a parade
And all the wine is all for me


We had some happy obligations south of the city, I mean south like Mexico. Way down in the bottom of the American boot, the legging or whatever it is. The ash settling on Orange and Bernadino; some mansion policies cashed in Riverside, Los Angeles. The drive down this way unimaginative, God's cutouts of earth and vegetation the color of cardboard. I imagined the smog caught in valleys encouraging to the imagination, like the voids of whites and grays in a japanese silk painting, or multiple endings of a choose-your-own-adventure novel. But I was too cynical to imagine anything more than the already true dust and wasteland and stripmall lying beyond. I drank tea and listened to Dylan's Time Out of Mind, that nicotine voice somehow sweet. My baby took a nap and I passed a lot of cars.

Four-hundred and fifty miles into the six-lane freeway network of SoCal, weaving between fine driving machines recently rolled off the lot. Cathleen's sister had dinner waiting for us in her cozy apartment, a strange mix on the stereo and a couple dewey bottles of beer on the table. I dreamt of shallow darkness and street vendors. I saw dust-laden soldiers thick with gear tramping through Nasiriyah and Baghdad. Something didn't feel right, there was something unsaid in my life... an inability to do anything but feel or not feel the atrocities beyond the bubble. Somehow not in conflict with the love abundant in my life, but nonetheless real. The sleep of NyQuil and safe harbor.