These guys are really grood. I mean, good...and great. Great and good.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
Maybe a weekend in the Bay Area was not such a good idea...
'Cause now I have no desire to be back here for even one more day. Don't get me wrong, I actually have been quite happy with my time working at TAC and being among my good friends and all---and despite it's reputation even Ojai is pretty and quiet and enjoyable...but it is time to open the old trunk of adventure again, and I am already mentally far, far from here. I will miss much from this place when I go, but there is too much waiting for me across that Goldan Gate...
The Last Gentleman and I left on Friday for Santa Cruz and spent most of the weekend with a dear old friend, watching weird/uncomfortable/hilarious episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, smoking, drinking Pisco, laughing, playing guitar and discussing our college days together. We basically didn't sleep (do we/will we ever?), I got sick, and we nearly forgot to eat at all, but his sweet lady made us an awesome breakfast, so we pulled through.
Sunday we went in search of a long-lost cousin of mine, and found her without much trouble in Oakland. I had no way to get a hold of her, so I just drove around trying to find her old work; (the last I knew of her was that she worked at a huge warehouse junk store called Urban Ore on Ashby Ave., and that was two years ago). We found the place, and discovered from a character who looked like a 25-year-old Buffalo Bill that she had quite just the week before---from there it was easy. For a cousin, she's pretty cool, and her turn of the [19th] century apartment kicks booty---1920s-60s decor and appliances, complete with rust, scratches, scuffs and dents, but all fully functional and in daily use. And Johnny Cash was on the Hi-Fi. It was really good to see her again (My first taste of San Francisco was walking the city for over 6 hours straight with her years ago, and I have loved the place ever since), and we all stood around outside with tea and smokes and chats and smiles, and she promised to help out with work and accomadations when I get up there.
From there we booked up to North Bay in the late afternoon for a quick tour of the countryside, and headed back down California One at sunset. Through the City, a brief scrabble to reach the 101, and then the long delerious race for Ventura County with the likes of the Velvet Underground, Doc Watson and Matisyahu massaging our ears...
[sigh]
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
It is still cold here. There is a fresh layer of snow on the hills and in Ojai it poured rain all night. I have been selling stuff, buying stuff, working on stuff, talking about stuff, and worrying about stuff a lot lately. I'm pretty sure my life has never been as diversified as it is right now...oddly enough, I am sort of thriving off the business, though I am tired as hell. The present is hard and thrilling, the future is bright and filled with wildness and hope, and I am running for all I am worth...but soon enough, I will have other things to live for, and I will slow to a casual walk, making sure I see the sky and wade through the clouds...
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Thoughtful, peaceful, write-ful...a good night spent with lovely imaginings, ponderings and threads of an old story I began to weave too many quiet-times ago...An introspective but not too introverted state where mind and page bleed into one another and thoughts begin to live in more eyes than merely mine...
Monday, March 13, 2006
The weekend was very cold for California---about 35 degrees, and there is snow on the hills. It's fun. Almost makes me think I am in the north again; and it is supposed to rain a lot more all through this week and into next weekend. But I am looking forward to warm weather and summertime soon, and the chance to ride bikes and motorcycles and go swimming...and those long lazy summer nights...mmmmmm.....
Friday, March 10, 2006
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
We went out that night knowing it would be the last time we would hang out, one on one, both as we had known each other for all of our time growing up together. He, my brother and best friend, is joining the army in a few days, and will be sent as an infantry scout to Iraq. That night was perhaps the best time I have ever had with him...he was his old self again after years of trouble and distance and misunderstanding in both of us...and I think I have been more myself and better able to love of late as well...our love had never slacked, but on that chilly Sunday night all fell away and we were fifteen and crazy and laughing again. It started out in a nearly empty Irish pub where we nabbed a couple of drinks, and when it closed we wandered through Riverfront park like in our old skater days; we climbed a 50-foot sculpture in the dark and discovered that the artist had written in the cross-bracing at the very top: 'Transcend the Bullshit.' After a few smokes and deep talk, we walked across downtown for food and ended up at the huge shopping center/movie theater by the river. A grinning glance at each other was all that was needed: in no time we had mounted the parking structure, shimmied up a light pole, and were on the roof (about 10 stories up) tossing pennies out into frosty space and gazing over the town that for so many years had been our home. Spotting a glowing white cross off in the blackness of the hills beyond the edge of town, it was clear that the next step was to find it. The road that lead behind the cemetery where the cross was presumed to be had long ago been barricaded by rather large piles of dirt and rock; but SuperChick had kindly loaned us her kick-ass, mud-slaying 4x4 Toyota, so.....through the ditch, over the burm, between some trees and around some rocks and we were golden. We explored nearly every inch of that road, almost ran out of gas, got lost (briefly) and then parked on an ancient overpass and trotted into the empty, 1:00am-soaked graveyard. Away across the vast expanse of yellow-brown lawn someone had left a lone candle burning. In the erie half-dark duskiness of reflected light off the clouds from the nearby city we studied that single lonely flame fluttering a little in the almost still night. I lit my cigarette from the flame and said a prayer for the guy's soul: he had died at 27. Quietly we left the candle and the silence and peace of our deceased fellow men, found the truck in the dark and headed into deeper blackness. Finding our way up a steep cliff the truck did a manly thrashing climb through a cleft in the rock and we suddenly burst onto the top a tall cliff near a road, on the wrong side of a large boulder barrier. It just so happened that we had roared up over a cliff that looks completely impossible to drive, out of a black, tree-filled valley were there should not have been anything like a road, and landed with our headlights aimed directly at a poor white trash couple parked by the roadside making out in a beater Ford Festiva. Pardon, (snicker). It took some heaving on a large rock and a precarious drive near the cliff edge, but we coaxed poor SuperChick's willing truck over the barrier and onto the road, with only a slight ding to the running board. She forgave us (whew), 'cause she's a good 'un. We wrapped the night up soon after that, and now I'm in California again and he will shortly be in BT. I don't think I have the words to describe what's in my soul...he's my brother and I will sure miss him. We never did find the cross, but we were guided by love and the companionship that comes only with real family, and nothing could have added to the experience. I keep thinking about family; I really understand now why a man will leave his mother and father and friends and bind himself to a girl and build a life with her. Because what we shared out there, running around, talking, laughing, remembering, just appreciating the other's company...that is only possible by the love of family. I mourn our parting, but am thankful for a such a farewell...God is watching over us all.
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