2/8/04
E-mail to Bonz:
That place--Loraine's--was always intriguing. Something about it--not sure what--but something gave it a certain...a certain quality. A quaint sort of solitariness and a strength, perched up there on the hill, nearly hidden from view. Can't really put my finger on it.
It was for sale a few years back and I wanted to go look at it--but Angie said "Yuck. You and your weird houses and music and art and..."
Ahh, wedded bliss.
Odd thing: once in a while she'll say something that makes it seem as though she's a complete stranger. Not just unfamiliar, but a complete and utter stranger! I have to step back, shake it off, press reset, look around at this house and these things (and that fucking TV, may it burn in hell for eternity along with the inventor of the cathode tube). Then I look at her, and for a moment she even looks like a stranger. And I think, Who the hell are you? And how did we get together in the first place?
But then it all comes rushing back in on me, like memories do, and soon I'm awash in warm fuzzy mental video clips of her smiling face and the smell of her sweat ("I don't sweat; I glisten"), the sound and feel of her wet tongue in my ear.
And the first time we met--how her tube top seemed to be calling to me (c'mon in!) while she leaned over as far as she could and cleaned off the counters at her brother Ricardo's house while Todd and I sat there around the table, chopping up little white piles of pseudo-adrenalized reality. Her smile, her rock solid self assurance. And how my bare bleeding feet stung after pushing her from the Bumstead/Findley/Lappy pad all the way downtown to her place, in a shopping cart, at midnite. And later that night, in her sweltering upstairs bedroom with the fan blowing across our soaked young bodies...
God that hurts. But its a warm aqua-green pain.
A cruel ruse, that first chapter, it often seems.
On a lighter note: Today I hiked and boulder-hopped, solitaire, up the canyon that leads to the Lake Hemet dam. I only went a couple hours up before I found a nice sunny open spot where I sat down and did some writing. I believe, before long, I'll have to get away from it all and take my second big adventure trip. But this time I think I'll go further and get lost; try and figure out how the rest of the story should proceed. I just can't imagine the protagonist in my life story moulding and souring in this stucco box under the purple skies and the pulsing negative energy that saturates So Cal. Unfortunately I can't see Angie following, so the picture may have to be reformulated.
I keep remembering how pitiful it was to see my mother die after living a life of disappointment, in places she didn't want to be, doing things she didn't want to do. Of course, she was stoic about it and, except for the very end, she was incorrigibly positive and smiley.
She was only 55 when cancer got her, and it's a congenital thing. So here I am, wondering if maybe I have only ten years left. Or five. Or less. The questions keep rolling around my cranium: How much freedom and fulfillment are you willing to sacrifice for comfort and security? And what if I found out I did only have a year or two years or six months left; would I have the guts to pack up the Jeep and go spend it doing what I love? Try to find passion in my writing, in the mountains. Do I have the guts to do it now? Would it be folly to leave? Is it folly to stay?
Then I wonder how I could be such an immature ingrate, and why can't I be more like Ward Cleaver and learn to enjoy the tepid mediocrity so easily and naturally embraced by most "responsible" middle-agers? Occasionally I catch a glimpse of him: the cardigan sweatered, cigar-loving me, reclining by the pool, beautiful grandchildren skittering about and giggling, climbing on his lap, trading sloppy kisses for chocolate bribes. But then I see the savage me, the adventurous Viking, frozen beard, raping (consensual, of course), pillaging. The Amazon Indian me, running through steamy jungles, melting into the emerald green and the glowing blue and red as the psylocybin cooks his brain...
Alas, the desperate thoughts of a (slowly) dying man.
Nevertheless, it's good therapy. And good therapy is much needed. Thanks for lending an open ear.
Lap
E-mail to Bonz:
That place--Loraine's--was always intriguing. Something about it--not sure what--but something gave it a certain...a certain quality. A quaint sort of solitariness and a strength, perched up there on the hill, nearly hidden from view. Can't really put my finger on it.
It was for sale a few years back and I wanted to go look at it--but Angie said "Yuck. You and your weird houses and music and art and..."
Ahh, wedded bliss.
Odd thing: once in a while she'll say something that makes it seem as though she's a complete stranger. Not just unfamiliar, but a complete and utter stranger! I have to step back, shake it off, press reset, look around at this house and these things (and that fucking TV, may it burn in hell for eternity along with the inventor of the cathode tube). Then I look at her, and for a moment she even looks like a stranger. And I think, Who the hell are you? And how did we get together in the first place?
But then it all comes rushing back in on me, like memories do, and soon I'm awash in warm fuzzy mental video clips of her smiling face and the smell of her sweat ("I don't sweat; I glisten"), the sound and feel of her wet tongue in my ear.
And the first time we met--how her tube top seemed to be calling to me (c'mon in!) while she leaned over as far as she could and cleaned off the counters at her brother Ricardo's house while Todd and I sat there around the table, chopping up little white piles of pseudo-adrenalized reality. Her smile, her rock solid self assurance. And how my bare bleeding feet stung after pushing her from the Bumstead/Findley/Lappy pad all the way downtown to her place, in a shopping cart, at midnite. And later that night, in her sweltering upstairs bedroom with the fan blowing across our soaked young bodies...
God that hurts. But its a warm aqua-green pain.
A cruel ruse, that first chapter, it often seems.
Chapter One
Animal Lust.
I'd give almost anything to have that passion back, to figure out how to reawaken it in her. Seems the chemicals that make for good mothers are the same chemicals that make for sleepy lovers.
On a lighter note: Today I hiked and boulder-hopped, solitaire, up the canyon that leads to the Lake Hemet dam. I only went a couple hours up before I found a nice sunny open spot where I sat down and did some writing. I believe, before long, I'll have to get away from it all and take my second big adventure trip. But this time I think I'll go further and get lost; try and figure out how the rest of the story should proceed. I just can't imagine the protagonist in my life story moulding and souring in this stucco box under the purple skies and the pulsing negative energy that saturates So Cal. Unfortunately I can't see Angie following, so the picture may have to be reformulated.
I keep remembering how pitiful it was to see my mother die after living a life of disappointment, in places she didn't want to be, doing things she didn't want to do. Of course, she was stoic about it and, except for the very end, she was incorrigibly positive and smiley.
She was only 55 when cancer got her, and it's a congenital thing. So here I am, wondering if maybe I have only ten years left. Or five. Or less. The questions keep rolling around my cranium: How much freedom and fulfillment are you willing to sacrifice for comfort and security? And what if I found out I did only have a year or two years or six months left; would I have the guts to pack up the Jeep and go spend it doing what I love? Try to find passion in my writing, in the mountains. Do I have the guts to do it now? Would it be folly to leave? Is it folly to stay?
Then I wonder how I could be such an immature ingrate, and why can't I be more like Ward Cleaver and learn to enjoy the tepid mediocrity so easily and naturally embraced by most "responsible" middle-agers? Occasionally I catch a glimpse of him: the cardigan sweatered, cigar-loving me, reclining by the pool, beautiful grandchildren skittering about and giggling, climbing on his lap, trading sloppy kisses for chocolate bribes. But then I see the savage me, the adventurous Viking, frozen beard, raping (consensual, of course), pillaging. The Amazon Indian me, running through steamy jungles, melting into the emerald green and the glowing blue and red as the psylocybin cooks his brain...
Alas, the desperate thoughts of a (slowly) dying man.
Nevertheless, it's good therapy. And good therapy is much needed. Thanks for lending an open ear.
Lap
posted by Jefferson | 12:24 AM
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