September of 2012, belly full and the sun just rising, I’m pulling out of provost Utah, shit, maybe Ogden, and I’m climbing into the hills, there’s a thick fog, back lit by the rising sun, I bank around a corner like a plane breaking a cloud and this song comes on the thumb drive;
I might have cried a bit.
I know I’ve been posting a lot of songs and associations, keeping it cold, colder than I feel it. At that moment, leaving my life in Oregon behind, no other way than to think I’m never to return because it’s just easier to arrange my heart that way, with a jeep full of things I think are prescious, knowing I’m heading into a palliative home at the far end of the universe. And god damn it if Sweet Thing doesn’t play. By itself it’s ok, with all the earth and air and water slipping into the rearview it’s the only song ever written and was written for the immediate present.
I can’t write the way I want to. Not now, I don’t know why, so I post songs, and I didn’t know why. Something about the cold sunshine today though, and I know why. It’s a reflection of what I want, I want power back in my hands, the power to create. Maybe power isn’t the right word, it is, but maybe it’s not too. Power has come to mean something more aggressive like muscle or clout (synonyms) but I mean more like influence (another synonym that has been co-opted by bullys as well, the type of bully that puts on his hair and hijacks the GOP). I want my hands to be able to influence the page. I’ve done it before.
I also need to be in Provost or shit Ogden again someday or the Canadian Rockies, The superstitions, Baha, coastal Maine. I need the perfect song in the right place at the right time. I drive around with all these songs on my deck and it’s rare that it all comes together. A week or two back I was driving back from Okemos and the clouds were layered in sever shades of gray climbing to a black peak, fat drops of rain hit my windshield and splattered and Golden Years came on. How and why that worked, I don’t know, but I smiled. The written test in any state for a drivers license never has the most crucial question; What do you do when things get bad?
A) Cry about it and throw a tantrum.
B) Pull over and piss in big gulp.
C) Downshift
D) Crank up the tunes, kick out the jams, bang a gone get it on
The answer is always D. Oh, it’s a good way to put your baby to sleep too. Toss his bawling ass in the car seat, get things into overdrive and crank the tunes. My son was damn near narcoleptic when it came to car rides and music, any music. Heh, the seahag got out and walked when Coltrane came on once; the baby closed his eyes, pinked his cheeks, and smiled to sleep to Blue Train. I thought maybe it was the land yacht I had when he was born, some monkey shit green Torino like American made land yacht. But it worked with the celica I got when he was two too.
Huh.
I had to lay down a bike I had with a baby seat on back because this one motherfucker ran a light into the cross walk, it was lay it down or get hit. He didn’t even wake up. For all the bitching my generation does about kids and helmets, I was damn glad he was wearing one. The huh was because I think he just liked motion. He fell asleep on that bike too.
I realize I did something I didn’t want to do in a previous entry, suggest a comparison between ex wife and current girlfriend, and I pulled punchs. The GF is very private. She compares favorably to most people on this planet. One thing personal to me, because she is very private, she’s the only woman I’ve been with, um, more than once, who isn’t driven to make intelligence comparisons. Christ that’s clumsy. At some point with anyone else I’ve ever dated or married I get in an argument I’m not even participating in about which one of us is smarter. It’s a self image thing I think or I guess. I don’t know. Sunny when she was mad at me would tell me I’m not as smart as I think I am. I’d actually have to be, because I don’t think I’m all that smart. My intuition is good and I’m good at pattern recognition and I’m confident, but I don’t really know a lot of shit. I mean outside of shit I’ve been party to. I graduated middle school. Dropped out of high school and later dropped out of college.
A few days ago the conversation was almost drifting that way, I told the GF she was a lot smarter than I am. She begged to differ but not like two guys fighting over paying the check. I mean she didn’t beg that hard. We are very much alike, we both the kids of professors, professors with academic accolades. Professors who didn’t know shit about dealing with the real world. To sunny that was her own imaginary chip on my shoulder. To the GF, like everybody else I grew up with, well, we knew better. Sure, there might have been a better quality of book laying around, but, too, the head of the hammers were loose and lived near the console TV for when the picture fuzzed. I’m probably exactly as smart as I think I am, and play much dumber in case a poker game breaks out.
The GF is also very attractive with a very low vanity … thing. I was going to say tolerance and then realized I typed myself into a corner. She’s just naturally exceptionally beautiful. I’d love to say that objectively, I mean I could, but she took my breath away when I first saw her. Nixon was still in office.
I can’t even say for sure what divine stroke of providence led me to even look for her when I got here. It was probably something mundane like Classmates dot com, though she isn’t a member. I had a trial subscription. I probably saw her there and decided I’d look for her. Didn’t expect her to be here. She’s, um, very European. But cruising through the online yearbook where everyone is young and beautiful (or at least as young and beautiful as they were ever going to get) she pops out. She wasn’t easy to find. She’s very private. When I got her on the phone I told her I was old and fat and balding and did she want to get coffee or dinner? Later she hit me for lying. I am much older and fatter and balder than the last time I saw her, I think Ford was in office. I’m not really balding, I just have a bit of a proceeding forehead. Compared to the Ford administration Haredawg I’m balding, but so is the thing in the Adams family (or was it the munsters?).
Sunny not only is vain but projects her vanity into the world, insisting that everybody is looking at her and wants to do her. No ones seen her real hair color since Clinton was in office, Bill, or skin tone. Sorry, not trying to be mean, but there is no comparison, it’s like apples and blonde oranges. An orange is really bitter if you try to bite the way it looks. Apples come in edible wrapping. Pardon the entendre’s (wow spell check hates every single way I’ve tried to spell that. Spell check can go fuck a banana.).
Ok, so I got that out, mostly, sort of. Be nice to one another. Don’t molest the fruit.
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