Storm is rising in Normal entries

True dreams west; that itch a man gets when the weight of time is unbearable. True dreams of ashen past and a western bent you just can’t straighten out. I was in this motel room in Sulphur Louisiana watching the sun go down on Texas thinking about the possibility of an immortal soul. It’s in the top five things you shouldn’t do, makes even Texas seem like a good idea.
My grandma told me to eat salt and bread and speak the truth. Not directly, but I was told she would have said something like that to me. I don’t know what it even means but it sounds about right. A man takes a lot more things on faith than he imagines or wants to, especially heading west. That’s why we think of things as good or evil; things that sound about right and things that sound about wrong. Sure, you can stuff that in a theology bag if you want, but, if you were my grandma I’d say ‘always travel light’. The truth might be a matter of opinion, but salt and bread are damn empirical.
I had this idea I might edit this. If I do I’m sure this paragraph will be gone. Today feels bad, I can’t even tell you why, I don’t know how to. Some ill-humored malaise found my head a compelling place to sit a spell. Christ knows I wasn’t using it for anything. I went on a taco run and it abated like a black tide, and, like a black tide it came back up and over my shoes. Melancholy is too sentimental a word, bile too on the nose, editing is like the immortal; it seems like a comforting idea but hard to work up the energy to execute. Editing is like vice, I’m fine with it if you want to do it as long as no one gets hurt.
Free association is tough when you got things on your mind like an ill-humored malaise. It should be zen and more tiresome to read than to write. When I think of free association I think of Jack Kerouac; a man who lives in the third person and writes in the first. He’s famous for doing that and for being dead. If I traveled like Kerouac I’d lose two thirds of the memories that keep my blood running on sluggish august nights. It’s 107 in Portland right this minute. I’d still rather be there, or, just east there where if I had an immortal would have been where we parted ways; not that I was abandoned by it, I was the one who left.
Nobility and honor are a lot like love; it’s hard to tell if you got em or just want to get a nut off until it’s passed. I’ve made actions noble and honorable and sacrifices for love, but I’m not convinced my intentions were good. Either way it doesn’t matter, not when I’m gone. I never aimed for the history books and have reveled in certain anonymity, hiding in plain sight. I never did nothing for sake of nobility or honor or love that I wouldn’t have done anyhow. If history recorded me some poor son-of-a-bitch would have to explain that. Like Thomas Jefferson, he reinvented democracy and he owned slaves and grew dope and wrote most of the declaration of independence. But did he eat salt and bread and speak the truth? Did he have true dreams west? Regrets? Mad thoughts? Body image issues? Some poor son-of-a-bitch explains it somewhere; they had too. And Jeffersons immortal soul bears witness to his legend making him less of a man and more the caricature.

In America we quit thinking of politicians as heros long before I was born. Some cocksucker punk ass on facebook threw this bonafide at me; I’m a fourth generation Oregonian. Oh, pretend that period was ellipses. We were disagreeing about something or other. What I didn’t say was how sad I thought it was that his family (I’m assuming a he, he wrote like his balls got in the way of typing) had stayed put that long. See, that’s one of those things that might seem noble on the face of it and maybe on the ass of it too, but whereas discretion is the better part of valor, impatience for who-the-fuck-cares is no part of valor.

Shit. This is what happens when you carry the weight of time, you get all prosaic and … I can’t edit this, I’d have to take it seriously.