l i f e
advice
Tonight I take the advice of a friend. The drink is flowing the Waits is on, but it's older. It's Blue Valentine old. Picked it up in a rental car down in the bayou and it seems more appropriate tonight than ever. I drink Gin & Tonic. Lots. And I think. Hello.
This friend has a habit of biting into the ambiguous, right down to the rotten core of it all (usually right in the human heart) and settling there for awhile. While Romeo bleeds the friend admires his work. "What?" Yeah. Admire. Then he pulls you right back out again, up through the mess with some bleak light at the end of some tunnel somewhere. At this point geography doesn't matter 'cause we're all the same. At this point clarity takes over for the better part of valour and I log off.
But not tonight. Tonight it's my turn friend. I only hope you read this.
I write a little. I like to say I write a lot. I lie. I'm late, but won't toloerate it in others. I play music. Music was the downfall of my writing. Gave way to lyrics and lyrics just don't hold the substance of a good short story.
I beat myself up over just about anything and chalk it up to the human experience which I don't put much stock in. But hey, it's all I got right friend? Yeah, all we got. So I want to relate a little experience.
I don't ride a train, I drive 70 miles to work, but my place for thinking is the scrapyard and warehouses around Bynum. I said geography doesn't matter and it doesn't but the name is nice. Bynum. The Pomona train stops there and sometimes I jump it and ride the cold grain cars for a short way down to the main old buildings where all the scrap is sorted out. Piles of laundry machines, fire hydrants, gears from impossibly large mechanical darbies, radiators, springs, and the fodder for a million grenades. Old art deco glass reflects the mercury vapor lights and casts long shadows. This time of year its cold and you can't sit on the rails too long after a train has gone by before the rails turn to ice again.
For the moment I think of hypocrites. Of "seeking nobodies". Of people who don't understand the power behind words and how beautiful honesty can be. Of those folks who I call the plastic rocket people . Of those who take literal everything. So full of pressure they're bound to crack.
I wonder if my friend has ever read "Walden Two"?
No matter. These plastic rocket people know everyone and everyone know them. They are critics of actions and would shake their heads at my gin drinking fixture of humanity. They have. No matter. So yeah, I'll have a drink on you friend, and leave you with these words by Mr. Waits,
"put a churchkey in your pocket we'll catch that frieght train down the hall, we'll slide all the way down the drain to New Orleans in the Fall..."
goodnight 11.17.97
