It feels at times that I'm out on sojourn for good running parallel to nothing, and everything keeps moving, including me, but goes nowhere. I'm forever temporary, moving. And it so happens that my track runs along many and we merge, almost all by choosing. These are the things that pass my time, waste my time- these near fictions that I keep my mind busy with.

All the nothing sports that take my time and beat my heart to their rhythm. The nothing jobs and nothing fancies in nothing towns. The something people, I don't know what, but something. Like a dream with meaning and you don't know why, you just know that it meant more than just a phantom, fantasy. It's got to, it's all we got.

I forget them too when they pass. The something people. Isn't that sad, I've forgotten everyone but one... and she too is almost gone. I pretend the rest. What does that say about me, what does that say about us? Am I heartless, feckless, cooling? Am I any representative for something more, or does my track run somewhere astray? Not unique, reckless and runaway.

It's the passage of time. Maddening if you pay attention. The where, what, and especially the why that wrecks the brick that builds. I get drugs. That makes sense. I don't get people that don't get drugs. And more, I don't get those that don't get people that get drugs. Where did they come from? Happy on this narrow plane called life and living, this sliver called love, and this one called communication. Good God what are we doing? Scraping inch by inch for even the scantest gain.

Having to so brutally earn not having the sonofabitch named John McCain as our president. There's an example from hell. Every small gain so dearly fought to quickly slip with too high expectations, the facts, and a pat on the back as oil drops below $70 a barrel and life returns to normal. Nowhere. That's where we're going. A massive delusion. And so I watch baseball, football, shit whatever damn sporting event is on, unless it be hockey (though I tried) or that stomach-turning ultimate animal fighting of men and women in great big cages. What is that? Give me a gun, put them down.

Beyond all the memory of this and that, those beautiful landscapes out there... God there's so many of them. And the faces with me there, they're nice too. Beyond all that, I miss me. I always wanted to keep myself right. Right in the head, whatever. Right in the spirit, in the heart. It's hard isn't it? With all the lying. Keeping it straight, face-forward, hands and arms, and heart beating right.

The End of the Innocence

There's only so much talk of the economy that one person can take and so I flipped the dial to the wholly uncreative realm of modern disc-jockeydom to catch Don Henley's billionth royalty roll of End of the Innocence. I've always liked the song (it's kind of shameful), but I do. I get those goosebumps sometimes along the back of my neck and upper arms. Such a sad song.

What's funny is its been the feeling and not the lyrics, which are terribly dreary as well, that effects me most. I never caught the politics of Reagan and the USSR, inner/outer turmoil, and youth awakening and wanting to go back and find that one place where they can't touch. I'd put my own meaning behind the words, meanings more convenient for me. I do this with much of the music I listen to and I'm sure it bleeds out into other facets of life, redirecting many people's actions and intentions to fit something more palpable for me (Sorry everyone about that bummer). Perhaps it's an effort to remain sane. To think of all the things I intentionally miss... sheesh.

Innocence. A recurring theme in every coming of age story or discussion. My kind of talk. I began to think the other day of what it means and toss the notion it has anything to do with virginity. Fuck that. I think it has to do with hope and optimism and feeling oneself to be unique. When those things begin to go, when it cracks ever so slightly and the light gets in, or the dark gets in... now we're talking. It's a kind of losing. Losing a bit of yourself each time and becoming less innocent for it. Knowing too much, that guilty hunger for that which brings you grief.

I lost something abroad a long way from home. I was nineteen and on a bus and some loud pan flute music was bumping this Blue Bird crawling up the switchbacks of a mountainside. Clouds formed from the breath of cordillera trees generating a peculiar microclimate in the dripping canopies. As we came to the pass in this rich jungle the road dropped away and the clouds parted and I saw a great swath of destruction below me stretching for hundreds of miles. Biblical shit. Slash and burn, cattle farming, tightly packed banana plantations, and the shanties. I could never not see it again and it was everywhere, it followed me. The garbage, the poverty, the ugliness, the lack of stewardship and responsibility and all those big words and ideas of the haves. The essential knowledge that racism is not nearly as important as the civil unrest between the caste systems. The glaring distrust and hatred between the haves and the have-nots, and the haves welcoming the bickering between lower classes as fodder for distraction from what's actually occurring: subjugation of the poor's labor and land. Bummer.

It didn't tick right for a while and never again ticked the same way. And there was home and relationships and the bitch which is high school. I watched my friends and acquaintances become cruel before my eyes, for nothing. I couldn't figure why some newly developed muscles and a patch of new hair between the legs could be reason enough for being a dickhead. And yet, there it was.

Growing up is never easy and some of us are still doing it, or at least trying. What's funny is the place I always felt purest and most hopeful was the place I was taught (and thank G-D I wasn't raised Catholic, can you imagine?) could bring the reckoning and an end to innocence~ in someone else's arms. Innocence is some hokey shit anyhow and its pursuit and attainment is as likely as individual predestination, Calvin-style. Talk about setting yourself up to get pummeled.

Rent-a-Relic

Cubby, our little Toyota Echo, is trying to get into other people's lanes. The front right shock is dust and with every bump the nose drags starboard. I quickly straighten out and prepare for the next bump. There's always something wrong with our car and this is just the latest.

I have the best mechanic ever. I mean ever. You know how the disembodied television voice recommends you talk to your doctor before considering anything? Well, I never got that, I've never had a doctor. I had a dentist once and then he retired. Now I got Johnny and he's smarter than most doctors I've met.

I finagled my way out of work today and drove the car in this morning to the auto shop. Cubby's gonna have to spend a few days away from home so I had to rent a car. Luckily Johnny had one out front belonging to a rental agency up in Berkeley. He gave the guy a call and I drove the rig over. The car rental shop is called Rent-a-Relic specializing in old crappy Ford sedans with no pretensions in a wide range of hideous colors. I instantly loved the place.


The latest line of Ford buggies.

The one I got isn't in the picture, it's around back. An old Escort beater with loose brakes and a hot pedal, painted a green that doesn't exist in nature. I love it. All the stations on both FMs are tuned to Mexican circus music and AM is of course drivel on all dials anyhow. I tell the guy I love this car. He challenges me to try to lose it in a parking lot. With that color it's impossible, he says. He's right. It's the color of 80's leggings, Teenage Mutant Ninja-style shag carpet. This guy's great. He's wearing what looks like an Indian Nation hat with mixed up dreamcatcher peace sign and the word Oakland below it. I get a few stories, nice ones... about how he met his wife and what it's like pushing customer service all day. I give him a few stories of my own and a handshake.

I drive out of there with the windows down into the Berkeley land mine of speed bumps. It can be pretty overwhelming turning down a street and seeing twenty speed bumps ahead of you. I think of all the pimped out Buicks and Cadillacs, butt end dragging with hydraulics pumped to the hood. It makes me feel better. I hope the homeys drag their fenders off every time.

Oh and get this, the best part, I'm paying forty bucks for three days. Nostalgia for the days I never saw.