I'm off to Wyoming. The metroplex, (not Dallas which I still adore) has recieved enough of my time and treasure. $12,000 (and counting), four trips to 6 jails and one Toyota Tundra later, I'd say it's time to get the fuck outta dodge. So it is with great relief and optimism, that I leave the cities of Coppell, Euless, Highland Park, Roanoke, and Terrell behind and head for the beautiful Grand Tetons of western Wyoming for the next 6 months or so. I wish there were some moral to this story, or some good to come out of all the expense and effort put forth recently on my behalf, but there isn't. Proximity has made real what I already knew. Police departments should not be viewed as cash cows or revenue streams for their respective municipalities. When they are, they quickly become the proudest, most patriotic, most efficient and professional extortionists, kidnappers and thieves you'd ever care to see, because they can. My advice is simply this: pay your speeding tickets before they go to warrant. And if you don't, then damn sure make sure your tags and inspection are current and don't ever do anything to initiate contact with a member of law enforcement, because chances are your day will end poorly. And of course, if you know you are about to do something illegal, don't break the law while you're doing it.
A random traffic accident in August of 06 wouldn't make most people want to leave the country over a year later, especially if they weren't at fault. But the end of my less than amicable relationship with my landlord happening to fall within days of my recieving an insurance settlement check has caused me to reevaluate the reasons I want to continue to try and make a go of it in Dallas, or even Texas, for that matter. And faced with the opportunity to sell the gas guzzling behemoth of a truck I have grown to hate and mix those funds with this unexpected windfall in order to go gallavanting around the southern, more spanish speaking parts of this world, have made me realize that hopping on a plane instead of paying rent is a no brainer. So rather than spend time talking myself out of the year long vacation I've been dyning for, I'm outta here. Once again, Huatulco sounds like a nice destination or jumping off point for parts farther south. Not to escape but to explore. Wish me luck and I'll see you in Texas in a year or so....
One time when I really should have known better I did something I knew I'd survive to regret. OK, it wasn't just one time, it was most times, but I always assumed that surviving would convey my good intentions no matter the idiocy involved in the initial calculus. Today was a day where finances equaled freedom, and in my mind still that tends to mean the nastiest most ridiculous pile of chemicals that man has invented to make me fell liss like me. After some judicious shopping that turned out to be xanax and provigil, as well as some heroin and a weak almost wishful thinking dose of methamphetamine, nothing seems worth fun. I still want more of something, or everything, maybe I'll go get a burger and regroup and shoot for the moon later. I'm as high as ever, and I want to be higher. please.
Meat Puppets, San Francisco May 16th
Category: Music
It can't just be san francisco, where the people are nice to a fault and I find new friends every hour. The Meat Puppets were happy to be anywhere, playing together as a family again. If anyone in rock and roll should be dead or irrelevant, Chris Kirkwood tops the list . No one's ticket to rehab should be an eighteen month sentence in an Arizona prison for being an accessory to an event that leaves you shot by a security guard with a real bullet. I've never seen a band play that left me so happpy that one of it's members was still alive. Happily, it reminded me that I don't know anyone casually, that I love all my friends deeply, with all the knowledge and risk that entails, and that if you are reading this, I love you ridiculously and deeply because to do otherwise seems irrelevant and a fuckiing waste of time. I do that because I expect the same. I love all you, dammit, so there...
Congratulations on deciding to fuck up your house for purely cosmetic reasons. Nothing decadent or grotesquely American about that, seems like every thing gets old in a few minutes these days. And thanks for taking the time to write, and thanks for the kind words, I do appreciate the sentiment. I'm in Dallas right now trying to avoid a nasty set of habits that for me seem indistinguishable from living in Austin Tx. I know, I know, whereever you go, there you are, but at least I don't know as many drug dealers here in Dallas :) I'd be happy to help you any way I can, but since there's just no accounting for taste and I tend to push people toward what I like, I find I'm much more useful if I can veto things I know will either look awful (for whatever reason, it's not personal) or that I know from someone else's nastily won experience will infuriate you shortly after installation and continue to torment you thereafter. Having said that, there are a couple of rules of thumb I will pass along, use them as you see fit. 1. Don't worry about resale, the ugliest "about to go on the market" beige or white is probably at least cleaner and shinier than whats there. 2. Don't worry about resale, it's your house, and you will be the one using it. If you see something you like, do it. You know better than any one else what you want as well as what you will actually use and enjoy. If you suggest something cool and your contractor tries to talk you out of it without using words like "water damage" or "electrical fire" or "lawsuit liability" , fire the pussy and hire someone else. 3. Designers in general are worthless. If you can't pick a paint color, ask your gayest friend to pick one for you. Then buy them dinner when you realize how perfect it is. If you don't have any friends, get some, and make sure some are at least gayish. 4. Contractors are a scary bunch of criminals, addicts, and nerdowells. Since there are no liscensing requirements in Texas, anyone who decides to start calling themselves a contractor becomes one the moment the last syllable passes their lips. So..... be cautious and take the time necessary to find one who, despite the odds, also knows what they are doing. Great advice I know, but given our penchant for kennedy-esque alcoholism and drug abuse worthy of planet funkenstein, how the fuck is this possible? 5. Demand a list of references, and if you do nothing else in your entire advice reading life, check those references. And by check, I mean call, have lunch with, go visit, poke, prod and otherwise inspect whatever job they had done, discuss price, attention to detail, and don't assume any fucking thing ever. And fucking be specific. Some people may not mind having to pay to have their carpet shampooed after the job because the contractor seldom or never used a drop cloth, others may prefer their contractor have some notion that their jobsite is still your home and take appropriate preventative measures such as covering or otherwise restricting the flow of dust and debris to areas of the house not under construction. It's sometimes harder than you think to tell just by looking who among your prospective contractors has been in someone's house before and left it unfucked up. Former clients will be overjoyed to share such tidbits as well as things like "John does wonderful work but he tends to underestimate by a factor of around 30 how long things will take"
6. Don't spend a bunch of money on glass tile. I've done so much of it, that despite it's shiney glittery initial beauty, I'm convinced that most installations are destined to become the new almond and avocado appliances that future generations will use to exemplify the widespread bad taste of our current decade. If you truly love it, and want it in your home, see #'s 1 & 2 above. 7. Never tile a counter top (grout lines suck to clean and they aren't flat should you ever need to use a pen and paper atop one) and finally, 8. Never, ever, ever, ever, no matter how long you've been in San Antonio or Santa Fe, never use Saltillo tile for anything, ever. Period. Well, maybe shrapnel.. It's soft, absorbent, irregular and unlevel, qualities you'll find annoying in a floor, no matter how rustic you want it to look, but could prove useful if you soak it in eboli virus and fill pipe bombs with shards of it. Use the ceramic lookalike stuff instead. For the floor I mean. It's hard and flat. 9. It's your house and anyone who wants to argue about it can go fuck themselves in someone else's yard or carport. Hope that helps, feel free to ask me anything, I'm usually pretty honest, but I am a contractor so I do lie a lot. It's not just a stereotype or a myth. Why that is exactly is a hardish question to try and solve. Whether it's all the drugs involved in the most mundane remodel or just the selfish lack of concern for the time, space, money, and sense of general well being of other people, I'm sure it's one or the other. Sometimes I think it's both.
Two days in Trinity to gather the last of my things felt like a funeral where I was the guest of honor. I don't hate disappointing those who constantly expect to recieve news of my demise, but when people you thought knew you better than that start to worry, only a fool wouldn't at least consider the possibility that perhaps they were on to something. I considered them silly for worrying, packed my truck and left, heading north. On the way to Dallas I made a quick detour thru the East Texas pines to Jacksonville, thinking it might be nice to drop in on my 87 year old grandmother because her kitchen table is the closest thing to bedrock I've ever known. There have been times when I didn't make the trip to J'ville for christmas or thanksgiving, like last year, and a couple more before that, but when I finally show up, months, sometimes years late, she's as glad to see me as I am her ,and when I apologize for the long interval between visits she doesn't want to hear it. She wants to know if I've been keeping up with the Longhorns or the Rangers, or this season of Grey's Anatomy. And have I had supper yet because she just made cornbread or pot roast or ham or beans and bacon and it won't take two seconds to warm up a plate. I never decline anything from Mama Pope's kitchen and I've never once regretted it. When I was not much younger it never really clicked that my sweet little ol' grandma who was always so reserved, even demure, grew up picking cotton during the depression then started her own family with my grandaddy in her own house on her own farm on another dirt floor with chickens in the yard and forty gallon barrels by the gate, full of Papa's beer cans and whiskey bottles. After he died one year on christmas eve, she went down to the courthouse and married a crazy old charming redneck bastard named Earl, and after my mom and her siblings got done being pissed they loved Earl but with the condition he be very good to Mama Pope, and of course he mostly was, right up until the night before christmas almost ten years ago, and today Mama Pope still lives aloine. I pulled into the the driveway on Brown street, and everything was just as it always was. There were brightly colored flowers blooming in the beds surrounding the house, and there were two or three water hose spread out across the yard, each ending in a large neon green sprinkler as if to say "I know the grass is gettin' a tiny bit overgrown, just as I intended". Her yard was as cared for and looked after as any other in the places where people care about such things. But the Buick wasn't in the driveway and no one answered when I knocked on the back door, so I drove to my cousin's place across town. Not only was Mama Pope not there, no one had seen or heard from her since very early that morning. Not an inordinate amount of time, but when someone is eighty seven and there whereabouts are uncertain, better safe than sorry. But after half a dozen calls failed to uncover any sightings, we all began to speculate over drinks as to her most likely current whereabouts, with none of us stating the obvious. Instead, putting myself in her shoes, I asked if she might be holed up across the border in Louisiana, drinking and gambling in one of the hundreds of 24 hour casinos, on a barstool surrounded with stacks of brightly colored poker chips, smoking free Winstons and apologizing to the confused teenage blackjack dealer she'd just taken to the cleaners. Greg looked at me like I was a retarded step cousin without a drop of blood between us and said there was no way in hell mama Pope was in Louisiana on a riverboat casino, not twice in a week. She had just returned the day before yesterday from a long weekend spent with her church group on "the boats" as she called them. Every one agreed that she would never take two gambling vacations so close on top of one another, although I honestly don't know why that seemed so obvious. My grandmother is not what I think of as conventional, much less predictable. She got a harley for her 65th birhtday, sold it soon after, but not before dozens of photos were made of Mama Pope trying to look casual holding her shiny yellow helmet and sporting a new set of full racing leathers. She jumped out of a perfectly airworthy airplane at some point after that, whether that was before or after her stroke, I can't remember, but there's no doubt she does. Still, as loathe as I am to admit it, 87 is a lot closer to the finish line than 65 or 75, and nobody lives forever. So we looked around the room and tried not to look at the phone, everyone thinking what none of us said, that one of these days the news would come grim and there would be no more casino trips or funny pictures because one of these times was certain to be the real thing and it could happen whenever. Every day is as good as any other, even the last. And it certainly wouldn't change anything if it just so happened that you just missed your favorite grandson who pulled up unannounced on a freezing october night. Someone should have thought about that last christmas and thanksgiving. ...
If you are terribly reckless or careless, or just getting older than most, you can be sure that almost all your friends and family have spent at least a few bittersweet, thoughtful minutes going to your funeral in their minds. It's imagined, and the more studied and realistic the imagined grief, the greater the sense of rellief when the morbid experiment is over. It's a relatively cheap and painless way for those of us doing the imagining to postpone admitting the possibility of our own demise. As long as there are others ahead in line, we win. Mama Pope undoubtedly knew this. And she is not a mean spirited woman, just mischevious from time to time. So, secure in this knowledge, she is not above using her age and peoples preconceptions about it to get free stuff, or discounts, or to skip ahead in line at the post office. But what I remember most are the dozens of times I've seen her take what god gave her and use it to fuck with people just for fun, mercilessly and with a straight face, for as long as she could maintain her composure. When she finally broke down and started laughing at her own joke, invariably it elicited a mixture of relief and respect as the victim realized they had been had. But today, when Mama Pope called and realized we had been looking for her, she was just annoyed that we could be so forgetful and could worry ourselves so needlessly. "Good lord, I've been at Irene's playing domino's just like I've done every wednesday for the last twenty some odd years..."
Brown Street was dark, but this time her Buick was in the carport, the back door was wide open, and the oven was preheating. She didn't act suprised to see me, just glad. Even though it was freezing outside, she insisted giving me a tour of her newest flower beds, which for some reason made me terribly sad. While we were walking around her house, she caught me up on her world, filling me in on the recent highlights of her life in Jacksonville, Texas. Mostly, it was a list of unfamiliar names that she assumed I might know, people who had either been born, divorced, married, killed, or at least gravely injured since the last time I had bothered to visit. I like that she thinks I might actually know some of these folks, as if I'm part of J'ville's inner circle, as privy to the comings and goings of it's citizenry as an 87 year old lifelong resident. Sometime in the last couple of years I stopped treating Mama Pope like a fragile bird needing protection from the world, and instead I just started being honest with her, and since then we talk a lot more about more things. She worries when I vanish, and finally asks me how my year has been so far, how I'm doing, chemically, spiritually, mentally, etc. So I tell her most of the truth. About needles and crack and heroin and speed, and jumpstarts and overdosing girlfriends and withdrawls and not wanting to die but not doing all I could to avoid it, and mostly of being embarrassed for having the audacity to feel sadness despite being blessed with so much. I told her about my best friend from high school who got in an argument one night this summer with his wife and walked over to his nightstand, pulled out a pistol and shot a bullet thru his brain that went up thru the cieling and out thru the roof into the night sky. I told her the truth, that everything was ok. I told her I was sorry, that I hated to worry her, that I would be better about staying in touch, from now on, promise. I told her how very glad I was to see her and that she was in my thoughts often no matter how much space or time may have passed since I last darkened her doorstep. And when I left I told her what I always do, that I'd be back much sooner next time, for sure this year around thanksgiving sometime. We both knew I meant it, and we both knew that come Thanksgiving it was entirely possible I would be nowhere near Jacksonville or Mama Pope's house, but that I'd be back just as soon as I could.
Am I really self absorbed enough to write a blog?
Current mood: thankful
Category: Life
I figured I'd start with an easy question to kind of get my feet wet in this, my first ever recorded blog. Next I'll get profound and deep. Just as soon as the mood strikes. And strike it will. I know there's got to be a thought in here somewhere I just had a thought the other day, give me a minute and I'll remember it. It's on the tip of my brain, I can feel it. Maybe if I take a nap I'll remember it better. Can't hurt anyway. By the way, I'm going to detox starting monday because shooting up heroin just isn't as fun as the movies and comic books make it out to be. I've given it my best "shot" yet now I seem to have grown bored with yet another drug that started out with such promise. Are there any non boring drugs left out there? If so, I haven't heard of them, so rather than throw good money after bad, I've decided to live less intravenously for a while. . Sobriety seems to be the last frontier, I'm excited about exploring it, in moderation of course.
Currently
listening
:
Wan Santo Condo
By
Wan Santo Condo
Release date: 26 October, 2004
awake
thankful
