Friday, June 28, 2019

I crushed a bug today, automatically, heedlessly, in a folded square of toilet paper. I felt that tiny crack of exoskeleton collapsing, that little pop. And within it, who knows? Something soft, intangible even. Where all life exists. Where all life ceases to exist.

Then nothing. Then I flushed it down the hole.

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

I awoke suddenly this morning to the jazz radio station alarm, as though unexpectedly. But everybody does.

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

I keep waiting for the update that’s going to solve it all. The OS with the security patch and the usability tweaks. Something that’s going to finally give me what I want. That’s gonna deliver me. That’s gonna lay my burden down.

Monday, June 24, 2019

Is This Thing On?

Check one-two, one-two. Hello, hello, hello. Hello. Check, check, check, check.

Is this thing on?

Check, check, check, check. Check it out.

Hello, one-two, one-two. One-two-three-four.

Check.

Motherfucker, motherfucker. Check. Hello.

One-two, one-two, fuck me. Fuck you.

Check this shit out. Fuckin-A. Fuckin-A right. Check. Hello.

One, two, three, four. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Check.

Is this thing on?

Thursday, June 13, 2019

While floating in the calm, salty water at Villefranche-sur-Mer, not quite warm enough to put you to sleep, I had a memory as I gazed up at the rocky hills, dotted with stucco villas and trees. It was about cutting someone off in a way, in a car, or maybe not—I saw a diagram of it in my mind. Something involving some Italians. It was combative,  contentious. But it never happened—did it? What could it mean? Or did it happen in a dream?

Wednesday, June 05, 2019

Adventures in Smoking, pt. 3

When we got sick of playing guitar Jeff and I would walk out to the dike between the airport and the reservoir. Watch the planes come in. Little ones—Cessnas—turning in big, wobbly arcs around the water and over our heads to land. Some higher, some lower, some so low you could almost touch. I remember one swooped down below us, pulled up just in time to buzz our heads, trying to scare us, and it did. And we smoked.

We drank if we had anything to drink, and we smoked pot when we had it, but we smoked all the time.

Back at his house we smoked between tunes. I would light one up and stick it between the strings and the headstock, then play, letting ashes fall wherever. Jeff had a burn mark there on his. We’d take a break and sit cross-legged around the ashtray and listen to his hissy tape of Starlight Theatre, Kansas City, Missouri, August 3rd, 1982. Franklin’s Tower. To Lay Me Down.