She joggled her atomic thigh tattoo, sun dress opened at the torn-up slit. Her garter belt seemed to dance to some sublime, destructive tune. Outside, the road smelled of wet hot dust, that common odor, before summer downpours. Men moved like 50 mph bursts of aquatic croc, having waited long and hard for a meal. I found it crunched in my pocket, before I hand-washed. In the silly little sink, with the porcelain chipped out. Nodding off, traveling north in a wicked cross wind thirty more miles. I can make it. Why am I pushing myself? Destination is arbitrary, dictated by possible cups of coffee. Arbuncle. Where outlaws roamed. The notorious town, where Butch hung out, and notables died, "…Entangled in a web of lawlessness, duels, romance, intrigue, and disorder." Sign by side of ghost-settlement. I backtrack to…

Who knows. I almost fell off the bike.

That noise, it's driving me to drink!

FzzzzzzzzzRRz!! rev the engine to thirteen thousand holding the loose fender front of the cowboy bar. Sounds like… my ears hurt, I walk in-Glares. Pants smeared with bugs and three days dirt muttering leftover plastic mounting hardware curses, butt-numb, helmet bangs door. Two chap-bearing spur clinkin' crushed-hat regulars look me up, then down. Decide-Close enough.

"Say boy-you don't look all nicenshiny like sum-udem Herley-Davitsen folks. Ya been doin' some real ridin'. Huh?"

They snicker among themselves as I fall, half-conscious into a chair.

"Yea."

It's over a hundred, easy.

God knows how hot that engine is, cranking off Nine Thousand RPM heat shimmers-

hours on end.

"Ow-wee. That's some fast-lickin' scooter ya gawt der!"

Saunters to the louvered wood, for a prolonged blink.

"Nasty wind out, too."

I brace myself for How fast iz it?, trying to muster proper enthusiasm for sub-light, ground warp travel.

Didn't mention it.

Their dark-resin'd wicker fan moves round a whole other era of time, than most-America inhabits. Everything is slooow. I can barely see the feeble breeze riffle yellow bills skewered

to some turn-of-the-century spike.

"Beear?"

Bartender, finally asks.

Monica Yetter sat on a Bud keg to stay cool. She was a gorgeous thing, who'd worked the adjacent café since oh-so little. Rather like the part, Thanks. and I think, if she were my daughter, I'd be proud.

"What'llyahave? Here's our menu. Yacun take it with you, if ya like."

"Water root beer and a cuppa coffee, please."

Liquid diet.

I realize it isn't the most ordinary thing to request.

"And a raspberry bear claw. With extra frosting." Dehydration faces drink cooler, hot Saharan sand streaming from corner of his mouth.

Coffee. I gotta wake up.

Wake up.

Funny.

Wake.

That's my password for the internet.

Two times, in fact! What's the chance of that?!

WAKING. One month later, different company, waake7huh.

Wake 7 huh? The numerologists would see stars flashing messages I can't hear.

She begins to talk. I barely catch words, watching her eyes. They are very clear and pure. Honest. Insightful. Brimming with youth, optimism, nativity, and wisdom. My god. I think to myself. This young woman's my elder. And she hasn't left this tiny little town.

Whatever its name is.

She's all of what? Fifteen?

Monica wants to be lawyer. She's buffeting.

"But lawyers have to lie. And ignore their gut feelings."

I devil.

"True..."

She sees big-cities on satellite dish as if examining life on Mars. 'They (the cities and their inhabitants) have nothing to do with my world.' The commercials are so…

bites right forefinger's nail.

"I guess I can't be a lawyer, then."

I'm stunned at the aplomb. One minute, a plan. They all like her plan. Now, she's dropping big life plan straight down flip-open ashcan's throat.

"Because… If you want honesty from udders, ya-gotta be honest for yurself!"

The girl is brilliant, whistling merrily, as if gains, rather than loss.

"You're right! Not being honest yourself, enables others bad habits. If we aren't honest, we won't call them on their lies, because then, they call us on ours!"

She laughs. I realize :

1.) All things of note are happening under our surface.

2.) Be honest, to generate honesty from others.

A half hour's slow-tick instants-we interact the dignity humans were constructed to enjoy. What a fool I am! Crisscrossed 48 states and 30-something countries, just so I'd recognize this?! All that travel, to deprogram a hometown prejudice?

I am sad-and overjoyed.

What's the name of this town again?

There have been so many Arbuncles-n-Shoshonis-n-whatshamacallits with their 23 saloons two banks a couple of barbers annals swallowed up. Fat digests of correspondence of crinkle-yellow mercantile invoices fill attics of regional museums, where wary parishioners likewise crinkle yellow, thinking about their own extinction. 'You ever been out there, Mabel?' 'Varmints and rustlers, mostly. They burnt that place ta the ground! Think I was six.' eulogy for a dozen boom towns nearby. Wyoming's a hotbed for risky geo-mineral venture-a big graveyard of clapboard histories, fertilize cold, stony ground. (I'm trying my docu-methods, on fragile cup doilies.)

"Whatr-u scribblin', ther?"

A hundred words trying to articulate the problem humans run chicken-head-off hither-thither with.

I try to articulate the doily. And the one before it. And whaat they mean.

"U gonna b'able taput that-inta werds?"

"That's the challenge; isn't it?"

Murray Bar's questions in philosophy

alluding to : My question in-general.

What am I going to do?

Hole opens; pain pours through.

Drank two quarts of ice tea from a mason jar in Hell's half-acre, fuck if I knew where I was. Smiled-the nice lady who's set up rounds for starship troopers, their movie filmed out back-refilled my sweaty glass 'fore it had time to dry. I'm a mite hung over, and broiled t-boot. Mostly for six of us crammed in a plastic-mattressed cabin reeking of varnish-we blew ill-formed smoke rings takin' turns buying pitchers ov Michabob-something under those too-loud speakers; catsup-staining Camels with our French-fry fingers. Boy eyes highlight bleach-blond's small-town crochet halter tan-booth lustie, big-fishin' small-pond flexing her midrift tattoo round a very naked belly button. Shook hands all around. Each boy licks chops, on cue.

Pretty f----'n predictable. Squirt.

I grab napkin; wipe. Begin a novel. She joggled her atomic thigh tattoo, sun dress opened at its torn-up slit. The garter belt seemed to dance to some sublime, destructive tune. Outside, the road smelled of wet hot dust, that common odor before big summer downpours. The men moved like 50 mph bursts of aquatic croc, waiting long and hard for a meal.

He had one of those baby diaper pails full of them. My eyes just about popped. I look at Darcy, grinning. I guess it's more of a party than we expected, huh? Base camp significantly higher, and it still needs erecting. Anyone near's invited. There's more than enough of everything. Hours. Maybe. We laugh out loud, clutching tired abdomens through mad crying session sixteen, with related gasps for air. Ten people's acclimatized faces flicker bright, milky-way light, blowing wind and sparks. Die in the dry grass, smoking slightly.

Everything… epiphany.

"I knew something big was going to happen tonight!"

"Meat too." unknown friend adds.

Mispronounced words spell torrent laughter, for truth. We didn't know these fellows. They have a crazy, vice-jawed dog sniffing for crumbs growling menacing nick teeth not moving too far towards mountain lion's lair. Beer flow increases. Lessons opening non-twist offs with a disposable lighter, down-under style. Girls rule; lament boys twice-as-long learning curve… Bottle spurts shaken-self. Only one person notices.

"Happy Birthday Darc!"

"It's still thirty hours away!" (So?) Spray cookie cranberry chews cross frame of camera, pointing this way and that.

"Ah! No flash!"

(Flash.)

"Ahhhh! I can't see!" Stand up, comical fall down Frankenstein in not one person, nor the other's lap. Who's got my shore? The boat is floundering, thoughts crowd in. Silence every seven minutes. Occasional Panic: How high are we know I know, shall we follow this train of thought or… you know? Choice. Fire pops, seems to distract the synchronous. Fire: center of minds trying to preserve themselves. Wanna go for a walk Darc? Look up dirt road-it can't be seen. Say nothing, nod head. Did I? She asks

"Okay."

Don't know how far from Allenspark. The stars streamed meteorite smatters (or were they tracers?); a formation of jet fighters toll-bridged the nine-thousand foot sky, directly overhead.

"See that?!"

"Yea. Wowee."

Jest. Satellite grinds cross million immovable points of light.

"You gettng highr?"

"How are we going to find . . .!"

Not sure how to end sentence. Poets end sentences with silence. "Let's be poets." But I didn't give her an underpinning. Things happening fast- tree silhouettes were ready to say things meaty, if we could figure how to listen. A ten-thousand foot wind blasted out thought, and I remember the old lady on Allenspark's porch, chink slowly dropping from cabin's hand-veed logs. She was beautiful-totally timeless, spinning that drink in her birthtown. For some reason, a tear started full, but would not fall my face. Solicitude. Loneliness. I am this person.

"Remember that lady??"

"Yea/So beautiful"

"And sad."

"Yea/And sad."

What stories would she tell these two parking their car, at her dirt road, slinking here an there… looking…where do you think the trail is? Donno. Her watching : Rucksacks full of new world tools, legs attached. Civilization invades her silence. Meanwhile.

"It's so easy! I'm flying, not walking!"

Incredulous. It's true!

"We're cruisin' down a steep hill, I think."

The Rational. Is it necessary?

"Oh."

She laughs at herself for five minutes. I double-over too. Not necessary, but funny. The rational. Wiping eyes:

"I didn't even notice." Tears everywhere. Funny-water-tears.

Wave subsides. Something takes focus.

"I just had an idea."

"Okay."

"There's a girl in my class six foot two."

"Tall."

"You can say."

Hard to small-talk. What is it… I thought of?"

"And her parents wanted her bones sawed off when she was young, because in-law was a doctor, and he thought it's a good idea."

"That's dumb! You're kidding me." she says, quite legibly.

"No, I swear! They were going to saw her leg bones in half, and take out some chunk so she wouldn't be so tall."

"Six-two/not tall."

"Her parents were short, and they were afraid."

"Of what?"

"I dunno. No husband live happyeverafter?"

"They were afraid she'd be different."

"That made them a---frai---d!"

Something to do with… that. What I'd been saying, that is.

"But they didn't?"

"She made basketball star, later on."

Darcy's disgusted.

"I think that's terrible-the same reason Chinese got feet too small, and Muslims girls… their pussies cut out!" Fuck(=)king husbands! Afterheard it. Red lines spat out. I lost my thought train, watching them.

"Woe."

"What?"

Now she's examining her toes. I'm not sure, how she's seeing them.

"You forgot your shoes."

"Yea/Just noticed."

Nagging. I'm not there yet. The thought. I'm swinging from something, about to grab the next thing. (Hopefully.) "You're right (about what?), but that's not it either. It's the different thing, and how (Oh yea! I got it!) the family 'expert' almost got her chopped up. I mean, her parents had the best in mind, far as fearful mind grasps 'best'."

"Compassion./Compassion for ignorance?"

She's not sure. There's a museum with three inch lotus-feet shoes. And foreigners granted asylum, clits still intact. No more girl-twirls for sisters bleed razor-blade hands.

A dialogue begins.

She listens.

We have unknowable amounts of betrayal and sorrow. Creative ritual can make looking there safe, in our pre-defined borders of time and space. For instance, when a martial art student learns how to take a punch for the first time, the impact may bring up horrible visions ascribed to prior-life abuse, defined as childhood beating, rape, assault, or war. It is then necessary to place those feelings in other opportunity zone, and pledge to go back to look at them. "I acknowledge and accept my suffering." You say, then separate your now, from your past. Now, I learn to accept punch without old pain. Later, you go back and look at the agony sent to holding place. Just look from the safe place, it will heal you. It is important to flow through trauma, so you can be in the present, with all its pertinent opportunities to heal. It is equally important to follow through and examine what "punches" bring up. Doing so teaches fearful sides, that you are dedicated to nurture/respect, and respond to yourself.

Someone is talking from a distance

"How you treat people, and how you treat yourself, has to be balance. Otherwise compassion and humor's a mask."

Did I say that? Wow.

"I think we should turn around."

"Okay."

Our lives turning, right here. The hill's gone too steep, and the moon hides behind puffy white clues, skidding in trees' stuff, and toes in the sandy flint-speckled road. I drop my shoe, and back up.

"Nice./No shoes boy. You had to go back for a thought, didn't you?"

Did I? If she's barefoot, I can be too. But that's not it! I want the big thing, but I'm still missing pieces. What did I drop? I had it, a whole minute ago. I think… I heard 50,000 die from violence and 100,000 by suicide in America. True? Any art is survival strategy away from despair. I'm looking in it. Listening attentively. My shoe never held such an important thoughts.

"How did you…"

Wave.

Big one.

It is difficult to get air, to talk.

The serene sea has tiny ripples we watch; as monsters wash over us.

That's it. We're trapped in circles that begin, at every next moment. There is no start to the end, and there are no ends to begin at. The whole idea of "working through" a problem is illusion. Wave peaks-subsides.

"Did you know I got a star and moon tattoo, when I was twenty-five?"

She pulls down her pants to show me. It's entirely too dark.

"How come?"

What are the trees saying? Yes, I hear them too. They whisper:

In social situations, you are often not stimulated. That's what I think!

Why do you put up with…? Mushroom take too much? Dialogue.

We are whispering. I don't know who's saying what.

"Check this out!"

There's a long period, underlying my forgetfulness.

"Shit. I had it."

Silence.

"Because I could always give the sun, moon, and the stars to myself."

As if first train of thought never ended, makes me impressed.

"What," I said, "the sky? instead of needing a man?"

Darc works with battered women who keep going back, for more.

"Yes. At quarter-century/I needed some pact with myself."

We were being extraordinarily lucid.

That passed. Unfurled. Dumper.

Crash!! Foam on shore.

D yu think they… us yet?

Wh-cares?

Rright

N perid Petry. Poetry. No period poetry.

Seven minutes of silence, in sixty one seconds.

Waves slowly passes. Toes make dirt road speak.

High water, draws back.

"You measure circles, beginning anywhere.'"

"Interestn. Who said it?"

"Me."

"Wow! You thought of…"

"Charles Hoy."

"Whous?"

Thoughts: Crowding me out.

I try to keep walking. Umber Giants. The Underworld eaves: Separation from self\others. Many shingles. Falling off. Rotten. Humans and touch-the CraveWall-Social conditioning keeps satisfaction, sensuality at bay. Events, to keep us busy-at odds with our internal own answers! We're 'fraid to look at bliss? Tragic. Why not do things that make us feel good?

Guilty.

I'm gone. The mind continues operating.

The universal search for completion overly-externalized :

Existentialism.

What really matters?

=Nothing.

Blackness.

Void.

["I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy,

that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while."

Charles Fort 1874-1932]

A long-line of post-rustic rocking chairs on the stretch porch of Roosevelt's hunting lodge. One patron falls down the stairs, recovers, and laughs. I sit creaking next to the predictable married couple of all-time. He is irritating me, knocking his stupendous clodhopper boot against my historic national landmark railing. But I am too tired to kill him for it. I notice fully half guests trip on that same step. Life, I decide. Nothing particularly unusual about it. But…

Strange. Even the people who watch the last person stumble and slide (laughing with them)

trip themselves! "Where yu from?"

Texan verbal bolts my creaking-chair air.

"Came from Boulder, going to Seattle."

"Ah. Boulder." He is wistful, losing some accent.

Tells me straight away 'a-bout dat house across from the Hiigh Schoool 'bouut '76 aand that graaval was aflyin all-round when suuddenly dat-huse jeest gits up an disspears (sic.), All Deerthy-style.' Weezrd of Oz. Thank-him, fer-'is story. Go to motorcycle strewn wet rainstorm clothing,

careful not to slip on the step, and get laughed-at.

Rode hard. Kept going. To the.

Art openings. Free food. Where dressed-up out-on-the-towners drank jug wine. Where milling crowds chowed from one gallery, to their who-has-the-best hors-deurves? next. I'm grumbling mechanical problems, wiping road filth from my light-blue pants. This motorcycle is practically new! It shouldn't be having problems! America Spoiled Customer always right. As if Banshee-thousand RPM thirteen grand miles is new still. Yo! Reality check.

It's 50 and raining in Livingston, Montana, with nowhere to stay.

I'm hungry, and cash is running low.

Damn. I really want to get back on that motorcycle, and ride a thousand clicks outta here.

Pitch Black.

I sit in a nice cafe with an old tarnished sheet metal ceiling, and stare past my water-damaged window sill. The pastry has a grease chain thumbprint from my dirt-road adjustment, untold hours back. It is still appetizing, more or less. It's Funny.

A hundred years ago, what I'm doing is unimaginable. Next thought blows me away. Mormons hand-toting leaden ox carts across America's indeterminable tract of nothingness. No water. No food. Sickness. Indians. Countless unmarked graves, and I'm on a creampuff tour (take a bite of petroleum-print) of hazards and discomfort. I wonder. Would these pioneers feel sorry for me? I feel sorry for lard-buckets in air conditioned window-wipered minivans. Don't I? They're insulated from everything worthwhile, like the sky. I flash back to Boulder, sliding off vinyl seat through Canyon Road corners-hair licks wind, shorts and T-shirt. Dumb. Idiotic, really. But you know... I was alive. Halt, at word : was. Why don't I feel that more often? It should be : I am alive. AND I shouldn't have to reflect enough, to bother mentioning this fact. The same way cruising slowly to Yellowstone, on highway... whatever it was, till gravel goes eight inches deep. Orange. Red. Sunset. Smells. Shadows. Too much to take in-thus time slows down. And that's a clue. The momentum, the frantic pace of patterns, compel us past all juicy anomalies. The sublime-past the moments where the I am-alive's exist.

"Is that it?"

"Maybe. Looks right.."

A fire twinkled through the trees.

"Could…"

"Think so."

Thought this before. This thing I couldn't quite think of. Had to do with loneliness. Us: each of us a fire in the vast wilderness; others trying to find us to warm themselves. All the fires moving, looking for warmth.

"I've got it, Darcy."

"Yea. Right there."

She points.

I stop, examine the synchronicity.

She stops too. There's no rush. Looks up.

"Oh; the stars!"

People. Little fires.

"We're all separated from ourselves. That's the loneliness we try to fill with others!"

She rocks her upper body forward, a couple of times.

"More, like..."

"I know what you mean. It's anything we can get our hands on. Drugs, alcohol, things.... Whatever can distract us from this emptiness."

She nods enthusiasm.

"More."

We pad in to camp, watching old man who told us he'd spend twenty years trying to drink all the whiskey in the world, trip-out to dancing flames of our fire.

It blew so hard, the oil light went on. I was so heeled over, the engine thought lubrication had vanished. Another black grisly thunderhead on the horizon, with a fluffy innocuous top, stuffed on free hot dogs and soda pop from the mini-mart opening-racing a storm up Highway 89. Read as: My Current Fate. This road's an undulating pothole dodge-compounded by stiff-legged deer-I tear through Ringling, gale pounding the golden glade flat. Montana is real. Montana's still America. Destroyed Oliver tractors ghost fallow fields, as I hundred miles hour shadows between sun and rain. How can it be this-damned beautiful?! Lighting cooks the rearview mirrors. It's blowing fifty, if it's blowing one knot. The bike barely touching the runway, as I launch to other times and place.

Distance: Whoa.

I roar past a Y.

There are two motorcyclists, taking that road. This instant, and I haven't seen a car in ages. Remember somebody saying: Take 12. This must be twelve. I have no map and

The road is gravel and moon craters. That's bad.

I drive five miles. A car is stopped.

"Got a map I can see?" I ask politely.

Old ranch hand considering 12 to Townsend.

(You took picture of Hotel Townsend couple hundred back.)

(You have a friend whose name is Townsend.)

(You should take twelve to Townsend.)

I drive another eleven miles, instead.

The wind increases.

I daudle at Mobil station, survey sky.

Looks like hell. (I should go back to twelve.)

But those unpaved leagues of crummy, spine-crunching Marscape!

I go forward, instead.

My neck tweaked by side gusts.

Oil light stays on. Bad. Very bad.

I turn around. It's more of a tailwind. (How can that be?) The distance to Townsend is my magic number, 42. I go to Townsend.

The canyon road is... WoW. Snaking…

It pours. I wait under an awning. Two other motorcyclists arrive.

We ride to Helena, yuck it up-have some merry fun.

Laugh. Three super-bikes crawling barely 50, cars whistling past both sides, staying a notch behind the skirt of the storm, so patiently waited-out. The thin zone, native Idahoian called it.

Poised behind disaster and bliss.

Life. Possible to love it.

"I-tell you something."

The bar as noisy as ever. I forget what's I'm about to say. I take a pull, for dramatic emphasis. Oh yea. Each of us arrived at that gas station by a process of hesitation; by not following out proper intuitive cues. If we hadn't dilly-dallied around, avoiding our respective highway twelves and eighty-nines, that storm never would'a caught us.

I point, scull malt froth, our stories tabled and sniggered upon.

"Too true," bushy-beard with moose-hide chaps roars.

"But then we wouldn't be here! Would we now?"

Here's fun. Drank to that. (Twice more.)

Learn something, that night besides ancient Japanese masseurs had to be totally blind. Every set of decisions will lead you to magic. All roads are capable teachers, and will show dolts stupendous acts of charity. So let go-don't fret 'wrong' moves. There are no such things. There is no "one true path" except each moment. All paths are totally sacred.

In every direction, infinity lurks.

I began to think about a whole new model of life.

Jürgen Wellenkamp

Wind screaming through the well-ventilated helmet. Clouds threatening. A corrugated road. The bike's not jetted for nine-thousand three feet. The front fender's loose, vibrating a sonic-reed maelstrom. Where is this place? I'm depressed. The weather sucks. My dick's bruised, smashed betwixt tank, the seat, and 501 button. Heavy braking for gravel and prairie dogs. I squirm around, uncomfortable as hell.

It takes me three hours to find its piss-poor road. I'm in a sour stop-and-go Western Slope overpopulated fast-food-ghetto mood, burnt by hundred degree sun, and a two hundred car railroad fuck-up, blocking every Fort Collins cross street. I find the place, finally. Some famous Rimpoche there; it's crawling with miner's tents and neo-Buddhists seeking enlightenment. I'm so hungry and thirsty I'm faint. Their giant thousand-year-concrete stupa is flanked by a civil war encampment of Hut-hut! marching ghosts of eight-one Buddhist soldier-police jammed in 5'9" yuppie bodies-it terrified me. I thought about my wife, who I couldn't live with anymore, whom I love so desperately, thoughts of leaving her destroyed me.

Instantly. On the spot. Something about the place... Have to bolt... More like a cult headquarters, rank and files ask-no-questions. Last line of a book (very underground oral teachings) strikes me. Final thing a holy man is told when training is over. Everything we told you is illusion. All we wanted you to do was think, and question. Can you imagine?! Those tedious years of mantra mutra koan dogma. Nothing. Harsh toke, if you ask me.

I mount my steed.

Hurricane winds buffet a blue-gray Laramie; I slop gas all over my tank, wiping back tears. I don't know where I'm going. Why don't I buy a map? Home, a distant memory-where other people luxuriate. At ninety, I pass three trucks, tilted to wind. I didn't ride the snowy mountains. Why? This is so damned bleak. The sky looks like hell. Lightning cracks my distance, as I roar through a shell of a town. This is the inner me. I'm barren. Speed up to one hundred fifty, just to scare myself. Thoughts of suicide creep. I nearly stop. Stop to sob. Hoping it will ease the hopelessness my return creates. I am fearful. If I start crying, I won't stop. Ever. I will never feel better. There is an infinity of sorrow inside. The road... isn't safe… uneven surfaces... dips and bumps. Animals darting. I'm asking for it.

Wind slaps me ten feet right.

I'm a wreck waiting to happen. Disaster. What's... wrong with me? I'm damaged. Something has gone very wrong. Negativity. Why am I so damned negative? Miles scoot by. Where Am I? Going West. Now North. Sun creeps low, finding clear space beneath clouds. Sun! Light on hard horizon, softening moods. Roller coasters. Grasping! Am I, this fragile?! Medicine Bow used to be two thousand people. Man who ran the gas station been in Wyoming 67 years. Railroad, then coal, told me.

"How many of you… are still here?"

I drink parched-throat sodas, tear two cookies from cellophane wrapper.

"Place is dying. Too bad-but I guess I'z dyin' too."

Pickup is driving here and there, old battered DDT atomizer sending mystery mist to high winds.

Stuff smells awful.

"Don't breathe it." He says, noticing scrunched nose. "We got tons. A tousand gallons o' the stuff. S-free." As if by apology.

(What stuff?)

"Why so much?"

"They hid it in the mines 'fore they shutem, 'bout 25 years ago."

I finish my cookies, find myself in a better mood. Swinging door bangs hard in the wind. Human contact. Buick Electra. Midnight blue four teenagers wanna know about that bike. We dance testosterone, feel more part of planet earth, dust and DDT blowing from dying streets. I start powdered bike, five dingy finger wipe seat ass-in spin fat rubber Buick's rear view mirror. They high-five, disappear. Cess the dirt main relic town, slow… 93 to Casper. Road feels nice. Turn around, buy two bucks worth of gas.

93 miles.

I Bet myself:

Less than an hour.

No, too easy.

Casper before dark.

Clouds are pink. Land softens.

I'm softening inside. My colors coming out.

Wind relents, slightly. Shifts to tail.

Relax. 100. No cars. Relax! 110.

Seems fast. Corner. Arms loose. 100.

Accelerate. I'm going faster, to absorb concentration. Mood is now. There is no longer a ME having BAD DAY. There is

ROAD, deer lurking.

Modern life is this fast. (Look how easily I'm assimilated.) Ten minutes:

100 seems slow. Front fender harmonic smoothes slightly. Glance at speedo for .2 seconds. 120. Slow to 90. Test. Feels like… 40 mph.

Sun's going down. Bugs splatter every solid surface. 125 = Normal urbane life.

No time for introspection. Corner. Blow a shift.

No time to lament the deep-red tachometer.

No time, at all.

Gas.

Casper

waiter, was set up, given four years for a quarter ounce of pot. He works 78 hours a week to forget he lives in the halfway house, separated from his kids.

"It's like Texas in the 50s!" He says bitterly. "I'm broke, and lawyers snort my life away in with their white-collar hype."

Business as usual; I have a wrecked life broken heart too; we scull pints of beer in glass-clink toasts of TOMORROW'S NEW LIFE.

Sitting in the Lolo Truck Stop diner, drinking the same mediocre coffee poured by the same boof-hair waitress as last time I gassed up, 'bout a year ago.

"That yur murdercycle?"

Gaunt, 76 year old ranch-owner type asks me.

"Yup. Ain't kilt me yet, though."

"Uhuh."

As if that's an oversight on Gawd's part.

"Ma best friend wen-down, 'nd his brudder died too, n-a bran-knew Herly Davitson. Reechin' fer sumthin with-er vice grip. Head-Ern."

"I thought his 'murdercycle' was brand new?"

"It was."

I consider the reliability factor of cast iron. He is gazing wistfully out the window.

"Say, that thing'd probly go faster, ifya scraped all them bugs off ofit!"

I'm the mobile bug graveyard, gathering up stuff, walking to my door.

Lady grabs left arm, right outside.

"Are you going over that-there pass?"

"Planned on it."

Is this a trick question?

"You be careful, you hear me! Look at this!"

Drags me to red Cordova. Note : Blood on seat.

"I just picked a fella up off the road who smacked inta a deer. Jumped right out infronta him, man claimed."

"Was he okay?"

"Most-lee."

(Jesus!)

"So you be reeaal careful out there, okay?"

"Yea. Thanks."

Bambi's revenge, I think-jerking the obstreperous gas lever while I hear a skid. A cry. Look up in time for exhibit A motorcycle sliding in. GRAVEL. Harley pins two nearly-innocent victims of careless Sunday driving. I run to heave the anvil off them, but can only lift it high enough to free their legs. Two burly lads assist me. Crowd gathers, tisk-tisking the minor damage on the bike. "Ashame it was such a pretty one." As man and woman lay prone, awaiting ambulance

Blocking my imminent departure.

Stiff upper lip. Wait for body boards to clear.

Driving : I'm a little freaked-out, wondering if I should turn around. Slow car in front enact passing procedure. Toyota jams its brakes, takes no-blinker left dirt road. Bastard nearly took me out! Bastard shrugs. You're the looser, donorcycle driver. I gotta truck. An ah cun-do whatever I want. Nerves shot.

Tow truck rockets by, smashed motorcycle gallows from rear, swings menacingly.

Bad coincidence-My exact bike! Calm. Gotta think calm.

An acute case of gravel deer driver paranoia, makes me not enjoy this normally engine screaming, palm sweaty testosterone gurgle wild river road.

What's wrong?

I slow down. No reason to push myself.

(That didn't last long.)

Maybe,

I like to push myself? Reeling dread in pit of my stomach.

I've decided to go home, by going this way.

Admit it. I'm afraid.

Will everything be the same?

Will I succumb to my own special form of madness there?

Am I different enough to…

I'm behind a car, waiting to pass. Suddenly: Big Rock emerging. Victim of gravity, perfectly aligned with front hot tire. Too perfectly.

Body English!

Hands off the throttle. Coast,

to grave gravel pullout.

Am I suppose to turn around?

Intuition? Help me out.

Idle.

No, I decide. I'm suppose to be careful- go slow. In life, from now on. Pay attention, don't gloss over details. My odometer reads lucky 42, since gas, I strap helmet to back, remove coat and go 40. And it is great. The sun breaks, deep-fries me. The wild scenic river enchants no-end. Occasionally, I rocket though some corners.

Even Harleys waved!

What changed?

I am in the moment.

Simple. I'm embarrassed. When you're in the moment, you don't worry about possible futures where What if I'd…? dew droplets cling to the endless blades of our past. We exist in a sphere of perception and feeling, that leaves no room for doubts. I don't think about the road when cars appear behind me, I use it. Who knows how fast I'm going? Why look to document feeling, in words and numbers?

Numbers are irrelevant.

For hours. And hours. Until…

I pull into my brother in law's house at 10:00, burnt by riding into a western sun. I'm asking for it. I'm falling into the groove, thinking/wiping smeary bug goop from the flying mortuary helmet. Damn things! Get enough of 'em and it starts to smell like… Eeu. Haven't eaten in a long time. Nerves jittery. Have to stop every 25 miles and wipe-r-wash the thing, but I push it to fifty. Wearing sun glasses at night, no water in drainage ditches to clean gum airabug-lacquered face-screen's no-goggle vision. Desert. Absence of light. Squints, after both sets of sunglasses pasted.

Freeway. This is madness! Hollow pit of stomach.

Last stop, before home.

If I need to leave again, I will. I promise myself.

At the river, I collapse face-down on a crumb-strewn Formica tabletop, and take deep breaths. It smells well-used. It is cool, though.

(I guess I'm tired.) = ( no Rocket Scientist stuff.)

Waitress: Very patient I've seen all-types stare.

I can feel her bore, grinding through the back of my still-prone skull.

Say something.

"I'll have your special. Unless it's liver."

"That would be beef stew and cornbread."

"Great."

"Anything to drink?"

Space.

"Like some coffee?"

Slight emphasis on 'coffee'.

"Nah, I'm pretty amped up already, as perhaps you can tell."

With egregious effort, I raise my two-ton wrecking ball head, some employ for thinking.

She's standing next to me, order book poised to pen.

"Just kidding. Coffee-yea. Big one."

Side of explosive nitroglycerin, if you don't mind.

Speech comes slow and thick.

It's what time?

Why am I depressed again?

I think about my wedding in Africa, by the edge of the magic lake.

I think about not being married

and begin to cry. I would have been… too embarrassed to do this in public. Tears fall beside cup. All these farmers-n-work-hardened God-fearins carving life from good earth eatin' specials.

What will they think of me? = The real tragedy.

Napkins for god knows what, stuffed in pocket as

dialogue escapes into sleep-depraved, road-wearied brain.

The usual intuitive knowledge filters clogged with bugs, blurred white lines and bad bar jukeboxes. Patsy Cline plays her soothing reprieve, till you listen to the lyrics.

I put head down, and smell inert glass.

Voice in head begins to explain.

You must stay with honesty. Not being honest enables the habits-n-patterns of others, who in turn will enable your own. Seldom are ruts in either party's best interest. "Be honest to seek honesty from others." I mumble into the base of my water goblet. "Check."

Bartender doesn't notice me.

"All things you're interested in, occur under the surface. There is a sheet of glass between 'you' and them."

Glass mist condenses to rivulets.

"Uhgh-hogh"

Nose smashed there, steam occludes vision.

Eyes still closed. Veil behind translucent screen.

Open. It's green. The cloth beneath the glass. Odd checkered pattern.

Green for money?

And go!

Rally. You have to rally now.

I drive into the hideous windstorm.

How many miles later,

sincronicity policeman pulls me over for eighty in-na sixty Fines Double in Work Zones

(oh shit), sort of tisk-tisks the dog-eared license, and lets me off.

"Just slow down." he warns me.

Gas light's on. Ellensburg. Empty 7-11 pocket on counter for red cheeks and sheep grins as I waddle out quarters, dimes pennies finally… $2.42. Shoot! Can't make it. She looks at me, like What's the problem?

"I only got… and, your pump says…"

$4.20

I'm gonna be wiping a lotta gas hoses. (Notice the 42s.)

She gives me an A-okay with one of those Deep South USA down home close-enough kinda-waves. I didn't need to launch the end of my 4000 mile trip ate the beef stew special now I'm plum-bust $2.42 routine.

Man grabs buggy arm.

"You going west?"

(My test question?)

"Yup."

Deja-vu.

"Then you better slow-down. Raining and hailings-like kingdom's come five miles up-couldn't see a thing, and I got some of them kick-ass wipers."

Kick-ass wipers. Hmmm.

I finger my keys, and head for a nearby café, to sit it out.

"Looks like you were smart to slow down."

Server purrs with rain, slinging on window.

I nod; she sets the vittles down. Wrote :

(sorrow)

How to be happy?

Let life be different.

Don't force.

Love. Don't knock yourself out.

Love Begets Truth.

Truth is easy.

Truth breaks paradigms.

Truth divorces you, from who you were.

Truth is the new relationship.

The only "relationship".

You're afraid to go home.

(Home is inside.)

Why?

Change is difficult.

Is that your idea?

Someone else's, we take on.

Why; I hate that concept.

She wants you to buy it.

Who?

I won't.

It isn't necessary.

Look how torn up you get thinking about leaving your wife.

Let her change too. Either of you can facilitate the other's metamorphosis.

Be happy. Don't dwell on destruction

all the time.

Dreamy window. In Montana?

Sun breaks. Dad hoists son on my bike; squealing. Kids and motorcycles. How come? Little kids are obsessed. They stare, then want to get on. They intuitively know? Freedom. Indescribable. Dad hoists number two up, grinning fearfully. Fascinated, and afraid, all in one. Gaze their little-steps large-steps off, sides by sides. Note previously-hidden brick wall painting, green with old-days moss: This cream Knocks Eczema. Noxema skin cream knocks eczema. How amusing! I never thought like that before. Love it, perusing funky old town America, sliding greasy dirt alleys. Gape pioneer barn rough-hew log-shingle frame, falling to grounds oblivion. Note shuffle Americans, who tend bar late, and serve breakfast early. Note earthy Oliver tractors, ramshackle 1880 schoolhouses, 1930's Dodge truck repose; note backyards contents, setting into termite suns. As freeway races nearby. Note counting clock-ticks to All dead Gone, living in museum reconstructions, and old 1950s prints

of the platinum days slipped by.

With trepidation, I roll into town. It's a beautiful day. I think: it's all my frame of mind. Knock/Hi dear/a little cold. Full of warmth for this person. Small talk. Banter. You're dirty. It's true. (Can't you overlook that?) "I have something to tell you." Fifteen have elapsed. We still haven't made love. "Don't freak out." Oh shit. I need this, like an anvil in my dingy. "I'm having an affair." She doesn't know I know the guy. I met him at a party. "It's nothing though. I thought you were leaving me. I had to look out for myself. I was depressed." (Some look out, some in.) The water is seeping. I don't know it yet. "I wanted to tell you when you were in Boulder, but I didn't know when you were leaving. I thought you'd drive 10% more recklessly, and I never would forgive myself-if ..." I probably would have. "We have to start all over again. We have to go out on dates." Theoretical. But you're not breaking up with this guy, are you? "How many times have you had sex?" A lot. Twenty? Maybe fifteen. I think it's an understatement. She doesn't want to hurt me. I realize, three weeks have provided her with more vibratorless fantasy, than we'd done in a year. Ego-collapse. Better sex with wiry young lad. Someone simple, who doesn't brood on the meaning of life one hundred sixty miles an hour, setting-sun-Nevada, two antelope frozen mid-road. I think I can hang with this. I'm still full from rich, frenetic miles. "Okay, I understand. I put you through the wringer. We all have fantasies, and need physical comfort. I had that little fling, high on 2CB, and wasn't honest about it. You are now being honest." Except you should have told me a long time ago. If I died speeding, I died. Now, I'm overwhelmed-no, just rattled. But fine, I promise. More or less, until she goes on her date.

Spend the whole day talking with friends.

Talk with dad, like I never have before. Veer all patterns to new interaction, cry in public tell deepest-darkest tales. Drive through Seattle like rural Montana-no speed limits at all. "What are you going to do?" Try and stay in the moment. "I think she should break up with this guy, and concentrate on fixing you two up." But you aren't her. She was happy with the way things were. I was the one who shook shit up, with dreams of cancer, unhappiness and emotional stagnation. I've cracked the egg of her world, and threaten to crack it some more. I have lied. Her trust is annihilated. "Still..." No stills. She did what she had to, to survive. I gave her permission to have that affair, a year ago. We vowed to never hold each other back. And she had her little fling (pause) but this is different. This is potentially on-going. It takes energy from our healing. The past drags me. Six months of pain-First Love, seeing those other people-walking in on them! On and on. Emotions out-of-control. Crimes of passion contemplated. Wife comes in reeking smoke and festivity, kisses me. I'm angry-you should have told me sooner. "I suppose you had sex with him. More than once?" As if I own the girl. Her honesty, hot knockwurst, burning my mouth. Her actions, the knife. "Why do you torture yourself?!" she asks… the good question. Query for rational part of me, plumb out of line. So in morning, strung-out from everything the last two months dished up, I have a hysterical crying fit. That seemed to have no bottom. Squatting in the closet. Puddle on the floor. Recover-Start again. How can this be happening?! I couldn't even ask. I have to do something. I'm dying. She doesn't understand.

Dear Lynne,

Black letters swam my eyes

a pen stained paper, with jet-void fountain ink.

Please try to understand me...

I am trying to excavate the stuff that's been festering inside my self, so I can see how to proceed rebuilding this person, whom I previously thought was sound. He is not. He has been hiding forever, and now he's trying to come out-- and this process, is very difficult for me.

I felt so bad this morning I lay in the closet and cried, said: "help help. help." over and over again. Oh God, I'm being broken apart. I don't know what's wrong with me, but Lynne--please help me get through this. I'm ripping / have ripped out all the planks--my personality has been systematically gutted in the last two months--much like the renovated apartment below us. It is a terrifying process--especially now I'm in my hometown, where ingrained actions are most apparent. In some ways, this process requires the same type of questions that lead towards psychosis. Everything becomes transparent, or up for re-evaluation. There are no bulwarks, or filters left, so it is easy to become overwhelmed. Late last night, and early this morning, that's what happened.

When you're in that grip, nothing matters anymore. It is all pointless illusion covering some greater, horrifying reality. You are utterly alone in this place. This is the rootball existentialism.

I lay next to you last night, as alone as I'd ever felt in my life. I desperately wanted o ask you to hold me--but unfortunately, I'd already kept you up past the point work would be hell; and alienated your tender greetings with overwhelmed, frazzled emotion that welled from anger and hurt. Try to understand what's happening Lynne--I'm showing myself in ways I never have before. I'm trying to displace, and acknowledge all small forms of dishonesty, exaggeration and omission inside me, so I won't be afraid to do/say what I feel from now on. I am trying to excavate the social conventions so ingrained through my childhood. All the 'be nice' follow-the-rules Don't make people feel bad! stuff. All the hide-your-true-feelings that might make people uncomfortable kind'a programming. You know, hide long enough, and the hiding becomes (only partially if you're lucky) hidden from yourself! In this process, there are a lot of ugly surprises.

What lied to you is an unsound. It is an old crumbling brick that's been over-stressed by a superstructure time has placed upon it. Examining my inner-basement for other, related faults, I am appalled to discover there's a slew of ancient, unsound tenants interrelated by quickly-powdering mortar. So my nice new building is precariously jacked on its delicate balance of poles, while I painstakingly remove its foundation, hand chiseling brick-by-fractured brick. And last night, the wind was screaming. Normally, this air molecules would not threaten the building. I was, and am scared. There's a lot of unknowns here in Seattle, and that weighty building is atop of me, poised to fall.

I don't know what to say. I, of course want you to have fun this summer, hanging out with out with new circles of friends, doing whatever. Lets talk. Please see if you can get through the disappointment, and anger with me--your hurt and frustration; you know it's there!

We married each other Lynne, and I need your help. I

She calls at that moment.

colored paper stained with negative ink of tears

I try to read to her, with trembling mouth

that can not speak.

And So.

This is honesty.

I watch myself, watching others, looking for clues.

It's a problem. I put too much credence on other people's perceptions.

Perceptions are Cloroxed, to avoid pinpoint self-accuracy.

Bleached perceptions tell absolved, watered-down versions of truth.

I am a very old bird, listening to lectured lecturers lecture

about flight. I am still in nest, looking down. I think:

I need a teacher. I need to practice finding the optimum perch

that will let me jump. I am addicted to other people's insides, telling me my own.

I seem to hesitate forever taking Kierkegaardian leap of Faith, in myself.

You know the answers. You answer from them. You know what why and where. You feel the right course, if you let yourself. You can't learn to fly, listening to other's words. Blah-blah. I'm still watching, examining truth. It is rare. I see jet trails, when people bold, underline.

"Truly..." predicating, what? "Honestly..." and I cease to believe what's next. "To tell you the truth..." a set of directions, postscript to "You can't miss it!" a.k.a.-You'll won't find it.

All acts infected with lies.

All personas are shells, lies project against.

Lies of omission, lies of over-exaggeration, lies of fulfillment…

The gambit. The doctored statement. The social-manners dance.

The false appointment, the tactical diversion... the out-n-out deceit.

Advertising lies. A checker listens, and lies forced smile. She gives you Have a nice day! reply and shopper's caught in web. "That looks great on you." Am I fat? No. Lie. How's everything? Great. But the food sucks. Lie. Mind if I borrow a cigarette? No. Can I come? Yea. Wrong answers. You can tell. Something, is giving way.

I talk about that something.

"I'm honest" My friend defends, appalled by a blurt, I am not.

It is Laughable.

He's so nice, he has to lie all the time!

"If you believe you're honest, you never have to examine the question, do you?" smiling smirk smoke-screen. He has fallen, and drops dispel still air. "For instance..." He can barely bare to hear this.

Some trudging through it. Some lurid Monét paintings, deep inside.

"Maybe you're right."

Maybe I am-but you'll find out for yourself.

You must ding the desk bell, to haggle with thoughts our secret selves hides.

He stares at bespeckled table top.

You know what?

I'm trying to re-engage my life,

but its gears are stripped.

Help me.

I'm so far gone, I pray to angels. Surround me. I don't care if you don't hear or exist. I will create you, to ease my pain. My building is wobbling. Everything seems fake. I am part of this charade. I am a brick in the wall of the society. I contribute, by fracturing with my fractured aspects, what lies above me. It is pathetic. All movements and thoughts are interminably twined with falsehood, and shallow, egotistical notion. People scurry here an there, absorbed in shells of lies, supported within, from without. I retreat into this chaos for long enough to question my future sanity. I'm chewing one too many things. I need to spit some out. But they have gossamer silk spun with phlegm, anchored them from expulsion. Maybe I should have an affair, so I won't be so freaked by my wife's. That's a tragic thought, that makes me hand-on-forehead, sigh.

We are avoiding reality, patching it with less time, and intimacy together. Or maybe not.

Ors and maybes get you. Your other hand slaps on premise the first one strokes. Get even. Make situations similar. Conform, and life will work. Lies. Truth; both. I sob, just to see if it's still close at hand. Raw. Oil on the pavement; bicycle turns corner. I try to remember the last time I felt like this. Penang. And the last time before. With Jean. I was how old in the supermarket, lost and confused? Six? What is this feeling? Abandonment? Hopeless panic? Existential catharsis? Nervous breakdown? It's total displacement. It is recognition of internal dynamic. It is honest outpouring of fear and loneliness, jammed under a proverbial rug.

It is a core, beyond external facade. It is…

humanity's utopian plight.

There's nothing quite like, the feeling of another man fucking your wife. It's a painful reckoning. The mate is a sounding block for intimate thoughts and carefully plotted actions; they are your anchor in a storm of carelessness. Mate is a house with a garage and a dream, a refrigerator full of food and love and universal acceptance, like somebody to cut nose hairs when they drape-wiggle unsightly because you never-ever look in the mirror. For some, a significant-other is all there is. Abandonment issues are natural. The footing of the house is gone, and it starts sliding down dale. The slope you dug. Significant others, partners are keepers of your patterns, and shells.

I am so depressed, I'm crying in the closet, rolled up like a kid in a womb. I am at the bottom of an emotional well, its mossy sides slant up to dark gray skies. I have nowhere to go. I am full of remorse and destruction. I notice I never cried for my high school friend, smashed to bits in a girlfriend's car. And why is that? My poverty. I add it to an infinity of things, to drip tears on. I sob it into existence. It is no way to live. I am the icebox stuffed with wilted vegetables and moldy emotional leftovers. Every time someone opens the door, shit falls out-grab a wringing wet towel, to sop up milt from spawning salmon. I have vomited old repression, and I've gotten it all over my wife, who's afraid she'll be sprayed by more. It is now impossible to process anything in her company. She attempts to stay out of my slick-sided well, with her nice young roller blading friends of red-wine pizza parties, no-commitment cool you're beautiful sexy-as-hell reflection, six times a ruddy night. Because I fucked up. Because... I wasn't honest enough, early enough. She is repulsed by my emotional weakness, an all-too vibrant reminder of her own. And I tell myself, almost successfully, two people could not go through this together. It would be total meltdown. Timing is everything. Stop trying to make the relationship work, or be something. Let it take its natural course. Stop building low dikes to channel the force of a river. River will break, spill catastrophic flood over the top, sooner, or later. I tell myself, almost successfully. I'm in fetal-position, walking around outside. I do not notice if it's a sunny day.

Where are my friends?!

They can not help. I want somebody to help me. I need a rope to shinny up.

Nothing matters. All the things I feel passionate about, are dull. Full of dingy rust. The rope is impregnated with glass and splinters. Nothing drags me up; nothing dragging me down. I must climb. Alone. I have to succeed without help (as usual) butt puckered-this will make me stronger, if I survive. No energy for monumental effort. Have to bootstrap without shoes on. Have to let go of us being together. Have to let the universe weave its intricate, unimaginable fractal, and believe it's the best. I have to bloody myself, and climb.

Have bloody hands, and live through this.

Then again, Fuck the Rope!

And something happened. I'm not sure what. I guess decided I was at bottom, so I stopped falling. It's in, hitting a ballparkwall. My friends knew I was a disaster. (Had this ever happened before?) I'm never a basket-case. (Till now.) Woman I had brief influence X 2CB affair with, wrote me most-scathing letter of life. I went along with her, didn't I? I've gone along with women-wants my whole live-long-haven't I? Didn't follow her prescription; her little tarot plan, and she's pissed! My wife reads the letter before I do. I sit there, as she highlights most-virulent bits.

Rant one was at least twenty pages long.

"I'm surprised you let me read it." Lynne says.

"My life's an open book now. I've got nothing left to hide."

I hear myself replying.

"But; you didn't know what was in it?"

Statement turns midstream, to question.

I shrug frazzled, cramp shoulders.

"No. Who cares?"

The night before, we mountain biked, and got lost. Hoyt and I, exhausted, water gone, faint with hunger, crest top of local peak, look for road back down. Wind is blowing, sun is setting, and we're soaked through with sweat.

"You know the way?"

"I should."

Which means No, in two words.

"Me either. I've been here before, 'bout ten years ago, but the roads are different now."

"Yea."

Stating obvious.

Life is a series of conventional events, describing inner turmoil, I decided.

"And it's gonna be reeal dark real fuckin' soon."

Ditto. Seemed a largess, if I could get the cosmic message. Especially since I'd traversed emotional hell the whole damned time. We had to choose a road, from the winding mass of descents. Loud buzzer. (Metaphor alert.) A chilly three thousand foot dip into unnamed log valley, would make a piss-poorsorry night. Potentially only one right way, and it might be the way we came. Mind-reading:

"I'm too tired to do a round trip."

"We don't have time, anyway."

Undoubtedly true. Our single track shortcut soon be octopus ink, was brutal-enough with light and wits about you. There was the monster hill to consider. We wouldn't even get to the single track.

"I think we should take this one."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

Seemed relevant. The gravel ruts plummeted into an ice-cold-vibe gash.

"Okay. It seems right, but I'm afraid it isn't."

An intriguing sensation. After you.

Full tilt down brutal crushed rock chuck-hole road... too far to turn back now... Keep going... till… recognition. Yeaaa!! I yell as my shock blows oil front tire flattens. I ride it way too far trying to stop gracefully (Hurry!!) Hoyt says, not saying anything. The mosquitoes are sucking my CCs of lifeblood, running chilled through sluggish veins. Thy tube is garbage. I'm trying to get the mud out my pump nozzle. Ready? Shivver.

"Let's cruise!!"

Hoyt blows rear 2.1 three measly minutes later. It's too dark to see all the pinch holes, of which, we manage to patch seven.

"Let's go slow, right?"

Slow. Yea. Slow down. All quick-fix Band-Aids are gone.

Like my life.

A little out of control.

Arrive teethchattering, get engine going heater blast inhale mushy red delicious apple like two pot-starved dropouts taking turns at resin-drenched pipe we scheme the raid on nearest junk-food establishment, anticipating a worst of the best of American cuisine sporting sugar cravings no seven year old would rival.

"I'm gonna have a big box of doughnuts, and a Jolt soda."

Eyes roll back in head.

"Mnmmm. Shortbread and six rice crispy treats."

It was hard not to drive faster.

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Dunno."

"How about we ride to Mazama?"

"Cool. How about we loop through Brewster?"

"Where?"

"More north east than Twisp."

He ascents apple's top, biting its head off.

"Okay."

"Crack of noon?"

"Call it twelve-thirty;"

Which meant two.

"But let's make it twelve thirty, shall we?"

Novelty.

"Deal."

"By the way, where are you going?"

"I was sure there's a store on this road!"

Here we go again.

Gas almost gone.

In a tight twisty with gravel on either side, a jackknifing red mini-pickup in our lane, having its three-beer mid-afternoon hairball pass thru tight corner, sidewalls visibly smooshed in high-impact impress-girlfriends thrill. Good thing he added the lift kit, to further ruin slim chance of regaining control. I think it quite rationally, eyeing nasty rock ditch with disdain. (This could SUCK). Hoyt drifts pavement's edge, drops over spray wide Michelin Macadam swath of zero-friction crushed rock. The truck is closer now. I compute trajectory. Rider A eats drainage ditch in two more seconds. Rider B forced to follow. If A goes down B'll run him over. Not good cuz A and B R-going fast. If truck straightens out, and Hoyt lays down, his Ducatti could bounce up and force me into Truck traffic. That's assuming I have managed to avoid the ditch myself. I'm processing this ten times a normal rate, as back tire locks. I'm afraid to brake front harder. Wash-outs a bad party without any beer. Hoyt staying left of catastrophe nicely, prancing razor edge with tasty red fire breather. I streak past, bang mirrors one inch spare from sideswiping his heroic effort.

Does the truck stop to apologize?

You gotta be kidding.

Driver D is insulated from this reality.

A and B shake with adrenaline shock. B's hand has difficulty shutting off key. Six seconds of silence. Long ones. I breathe. Americans, always forget how to breathe.

At least six more seconds go by. We look at each other.

"…Oh well."

Hoyt says. Turns his ignition back on.

I didn't add anything. He summed it.

This experience-

like each of us-our insides, protected by cocoon of metal. Outer shell bulged uterine personality mother embodies emerging child's form, though little in common. We humans with hard boxes of projected persona to drive around in, peering out of glass screen trying to control outside variables. People gaze through obscured vision, trying to see in other cocoons of reflected metal and glass. People begin to equate the things inside with shells. We don't even know how to stop these perceptions, and get out! Which seemed as muddy as it was clear.

Our red truck was the lesson, we hadn't yet gotten.

Obviously.

So we ate our bacon and avocado burgers next to a pile of sweaty, stripped-off clothing.

"Know what I thought, right before the sonuva bitch straightened out?"

"What?"

"Wish I had a pair of thick leather pants and some kevlar pads right about now. Then I thought about how I must'a been bad last Christmas."

"You're joking."

"Sorta."

Thought about death. It's so arbitrary. I haven't even done anything worthwhile yet, and I could be this hamburger I'm eating right now. Hoyt slouches the chair, holding his stomach, contemplates desert menu.

"We leaving tonight?"

"Kinda late."

"All those deer."

"Long way."

"Uh-huh."

"Think we can go fast, while going slow?"

"Vice-versa."

"That tooo."

"Okay."

What's that thing sticking out of your packing job with all the other stuff sticking out? Curious tourist wants to know. A peace pipe, I tell her. I've never seen one before. Is it real? As a matter of fact, it is. My uncle was a blood-brother of a tribe living somewhere in Northern Wisconsin, back in the forties. He told me they were the last free-living Indian tribe he'd heard of. Do you always carry Indian relics around with you? She lay that look on me, before words popped out. I retrieved the implement from my high school friend in Twisp. Left it there many years ago, for safekeeping. Unwrapped carefully from the cloth, invoked proper feeling, mounting female part, to male. It's heavy! It's carved soapstone. The beads are pretty. It's old. Deerskin wrapped round stem, tarnished with campfire time. What do you smoke in it? Nothing; yet. What will you? Is this that base an article to her? Why her eyebrow-raise? Smoke pot and get high, huh? Like I'd ruin collective prayers of god-knows how many people. Knick-knick, probably. I trellis. With a twist of sage mixed in. Prayed upon, of course. That got her! The thinly-veiled Christian, trying to deny her upbringing, doesn't believe in amulets, nature spirits, magic potions and animalistic prayer. Though she wants to.

Thanks. Shallow goodbye.

Arrive well after ten PM., in middle hypothermia.

"Nice ride."

"Yea. Highway nine was killer."

"How about that hairpin, right where we passed the Jeep?"

"Whoa. Peg-drag city."

Huddled, stamping feet, wrapped in blankets-a July evening where

house mate opens window, and we yell at her.

What are you doing?! Can't you see we're freezing!"

"How can you two be cold! It's roasting in here!"

Thermo-rational defense. Think about difference.

Two states of opposite in same climate-controlled room.

How important, opposite bottom lines-? Flash recent flight, trading steeds for backside mountain pass. Five seconds of acceleration; eyes open WIDE I'm utterly flabbergasted! These bikes couldn't be more different. Hoyt's 900 twin is RAW. It's loud torquey and light, pulls body back from every gear, no matter where tach tills asphalt. Ducatti vibrates the hell out of rider, makes rider more in-moment in ways, less in others.

No wonder I have a hard time staying him in balls-out corners!

I'm thinking. What a line this baby carves!

But I'm freezing. There's no fairing to speak of, and faded jeans are thin. It's short. My 6'3" frame hangs in ice-cold air blast. A hundred and forty fights invincible molecule demons smashing jacket legs and boots. They wrench-neck, and rip whiteknuckle hands from bars. We gas up. I get back on my Yamaha, over a hundred pounds heavier.

My ears are ringing.

"Well? How'd you like it?"

"So dammed smooth! I didn't even know if its engine was on."

Not sure he liked its sensation.

"And it runs like a turbo. Not much down low-then look out! It's kind'a uncontrollable,

up round here." Finger-stabs pre-redline.

"Yea. Can be."

Grin evil, flash-teeth.

"And it's got more horsepower than mine."

"Probably. But your power's more useable. So in a way, it doesn't matter."

Big aftermarket slidecarbs squirting EPA nightmare low-rev gas into squeeze-tight piston chambers.

"'Yea, 'cept I have to do valves every three thousand, etc."

And I adjust mine at 26 thousand.

"And yours tends to run more often than mine does."

"True. Power isn't useable if your engine won't start."

"Or idle."

I glow fortunate to have a friend embodying such different machinery.

"I have this argument with Kie all the time. He thinks I should have more power."

"A hundred-something isn't enough?!"

Rhetorical question.

We laugh.

Kie gray-marketed the $25,000 hunk of 165 horsepower sex (occasionally referred to as Bimota motorcycle) from a mysterious vendor's hush-hush sort'a way. Took months. He is new father, perpetually pacing wait room. One rumored hour, he excitedly calls. I roar over watch tear red magic from crumple pallet cardboard tomb, co-examine expensive scratches. Roley-poley delivery man eyes pop out. That's what was in there?! As if five minutes before, a stack of used tires. Beauty makes 170 mph Beast look like Vespa scooter. I'm thinking : European Hyperspacial conduit warper tighter lighter more powerful too many ohh-ahhs to count. Carbon fiber fork legs. Small neat-tuck braided cables. Look at that seat! Those brakes! It's meet-thy-maker fast, sitting not moving. No oil or gas, in hypo-allergenic high-tech composite time-release capsule.

Wow. He should call her, Thanatos.

I consider how hard it is to stay in the power-band of my bike; of life, in general. Everything is happening too goddamned fast. Keep dropping below eight thousand five, looking for cops, braking for corners, trying to read some map. Snake your way back in. The groove, you know? Its state of mind. Over the so-called top. "The Zone", affectionately dubbed by lovers of hormonal juice pouring to seretonal connectors.

"You think Kie'll trick it out?"

Rhetoric, lacquered with question mark.

He'll re-jet, add titanium pipe, and tweak something he probably shouldn't for better acceleration as if straddling jet fighter engine full afterburner, isn't near enough.

As if cruise missile is pales G. For as junkies know, never G enough.

Makes me wonder. How does he stay in the Zone? What kind of zone is that?

Do we force ourselves there? Is zone a drug we'll get used to? Do we need larger larger hits to feel its endorphic high? Kie always had the fastest, most quixotic motorcycle in the city. It was getting ever-more difficult. Seattle bloated larger, gearheads pouring in, every moment.

Reflect.

What is this zone?

How am I addicted to it?

What are the biggers and betters of my life?

Useable power is intriguing concept. In-city I zip about on bicycle. Big monster Yamaha rarely ultrafun, because its zone is so far past rational driving behavior. The thing goes a hundred in second gear. Bicycles weave traffic, and blow stop signs better. I also have an old 550 Kawasaki, totally close ratio'd raucous. Bought in California for next to nothing, drove it to Emerald City with a bongo drum strapped to its rear. Goes like a bat-outa-hell, until you hit the freeway. But it excelled in-city, where it's edge-it's zone-was completely accessible. The forks wobbled and its brakes are weak. It goes three or four gears between stops, full-tilt. It bangs curbs, wades construction zone gravel, sprays testosterone everywhere. It's a hodgepodge of pop-can wire-ons, header patches, duct tape and memorable scratches shined.

Strange realization!

In-city, my fast motorcycle is almost boring.

On small roads, different.

There are lots of dangerous unknowns. Lost pieces of cars and trees.

Lost attention at a hundred fifty = Lost life. Yet, as small roads get relentlessly straightened, leveled out fenced with limited access, speeds increase, by variable-irradication. Someday, motorcycling won't be any fun any more. I tell Hoyt. Like that road back to Twisp. I'll bet it used to be fun, twenty or thirty years ago. Could you see the old road's remnants, undulating above, and below us? He nods. Everything's so smooth and predictable, so banked and precise, you have to go a hundred through the S-es, for any sense of accomplishment. To get the notable grins.

Fences, and assumptions prevail in this country, he said.

That's our future.

Society dividing.

If you really thought out all dangers, and possible outcomes of action, you'd stay in bed. So we busily creating "safe" activities dwellings events mechanisms to lean on, to keep us from that danger zone. Which means we must push boundaries further to re-enter it. It, is life. So some day, a motorcycle that only goes one-eighty will be slow. That's because roads of that future are so hygienically safe. I can't use a perfectly good Yamaha's potential in a city, because it's designed for safer less-complicated tarmac. An interesting framework of thought! There are thousands of millions of people totally indoctrinated to safety first! without any boundary-pushing opposite, spurring them to a zone. I realize I represent a member of the last Western generation raised without seat belts particle masks bicycle helmets child seats smoke detectors flame-retardant fabrics sunscreens, and fifty brands of Corn Flakes not to mention Charming floral print extra-supersoft toilet paper asswiping endless varieties of "necessities" a normal life embraces as manna, these days. Necessities, like parking lots.

And stupid metal capsules.

And computer paper.

In Eugene, police pepper-spray a handful of protesters perched peaceably on condemned eighty year tree limbs, riot gear plus threats, to forcibly bring them down into shackles, so chain saws could more easily violate city charter protecting "heritage" old growth cut them down immediately, in name of council buy-out parking lot. Practice for Headwaters, where sneaky loggers fell native monsters, as second protesters unlock chains, after hours of double-time dangerous pay scale smearing cotton swabs of pepper spray in peaceable do-gooders eyes. Private property. No press allowed. A pale contention to NASA plan lets orbit 72.3 pounds of plutonium and claim it "safe". Plutonium. You know the nuclear-weapons stuff? orally inducing cancer at one millionth of a gram. Plutonium. Yes. The infamous theoretical give all humans on planet earth some form of terminal illness vaporize in the upper atmosphere stuff. And we're talking one pound here (not too clumpy uniform atmospheric distribution), so now try seventy. NASA stands for : National Atmospheric... Cassini Saturn Probe news coming after suppressed nuclear satellite launch-disasters whipped-cream-top explosion Hanford storage facility's dutiful cover-up by US government. Ostensibly to avoid widespread panic. Panic how little honesty there is. Government is collective of citizenss states o mind. The existing paradigm consolidated power on its long-standing premise of secrecy. Citizens : only informed as the necessity to do so breaks clandestinely-locked governmental door. A chance of exact explanation, or one even remotely remonstrative of truth, is utterly suspect. Government does not trust people with truth. People do not trust themselves with truth. Yet we believe we exist in free society where press is always-busy investigating shady details eager willing whistle blow. Each person is operating a government template, of broadcasting higher levels of integrity than they actually live. In this way, embarrassing questions come circumvent. A government democratically elected by its people. What's there to question? Americans are free. Can-nots can make it big here, where the press is not curtailed.

I am an honest person.

This 'fact', by repetition, become 'self-evident'? Try

to safely avoid pertinent inner zones, where ear-provoking questions naturally arise.

I merrily contemplate zip codes : ZIPPY's Zone Improvement Program-what we constantly undertake. We want the zone without any of its related danger-a virtual world-a pretend lie; we take no license in risk. Interact with computer simulations, trying convince us they're real... They are simulacrums of self, projecting outer-facade personality to onslaughts of mechanized, dehumanizing expectations, we later do mock battle with.

We are the video characters, moved by joysticks.

Reflections are critical.

The phone rings. I lift it, fraught with doubt.

"Hi."

"Hi."

I'm suppose to know who this is?

"It's Rita."

"Ohh..."

From Boulder. The fascinating one, I dined with, trying to dissect.

"You in Seattle?"

I ask her.

(Dread. Don't want to deal.)

"No, I'm coming, and I need a place to stay."

Not-thrilled. I poured a lot of energy into her, for precious small return. I need people to bare themselves, right away.

"Oh really? When?"

Hem and haw. Not sure what's up. Can't say for sure.

"Do you have a house mate?"

"Yea. I'm married. Didn't I tell you?"

"No!"

I guess that means, she's surprised. So I didn't say! Such the stigma. Like saying to woman sharing soda, I'm AIDS-positive. More omission lies homing to roost.

"Yea, well... It's not exactly a normal marriage."

A total truth.

"What do you mean?"

"It's open."

She seems relieved. I am now bored with her silence.

"Anyway, the twenty first should be okay."

And so on. The obligatory okay. A truthful statement would be-Rita, I think you're a completely fascinating person, but that inside's too hard to get to. I'm afraid I don't have the attention, or energy to devote to unraveling you right now, so it might be better if you found another place to stay. With the truth, I wouldn't bind myself into further obligation. Like dinners, palying tour-guide, lifts downtown, drinks.... Ech. Guest red-carpet treatment. But this answer has no tact. She doesn't deserve character analysis, followed by rejection.

I'm about to call her back.

Then think...

better to test yourself, and let her come.

Don't succumb to Good Host pattern. Let her do her thing, and not lasso you in.

If you call her back, you've taken the easy way out. You can already do that. How do you know? Skeptic chides. Look, phone in your hand! Fingers waggle her buttons. Very interesting. I re-cradle. This path, is even higher form of honesty. Take the more challenging route. More honesty tests, you'll want to avoid. Spotlight.

Visitor over lakeswimming, mistakenly reads paper. Lying around. Headline.

DEPRESSED. Long-standing friend reads tome of harangue, and character deformation, affair-lady typed. Be honest now-tell me in your estimation, what's truthful here.

I query her. I need to know.

She tells me.

Honesty is a bitch.

Diversion.

Mountain bike race at local ski area.

The World Championship downhill?!

Hoyt borrows record-breaking bike, plans to enter. Ever done it before? No. Gimme a few hints, he asks his frame-builder friend. "Hang on, and pedal like hell!"

(Gutsy boy.)

Wanna go with me?

Queries. I say: You're joking.

Not to race. To photograph. Sure. Why not?

Fear of crash mitigated by master of chin-ups. Three hundred and seventy, by 62 year old Korean bloke. See? Gotta go for it in life. Can't worry about falling down. We flash the oncoming truck. Yeas... all chess. Keep attacking. Checkmate in Persian means The king is dead-even if King's still technically live. On the board. That's what happens to people. They're dead,

but they're still on-board, preparing non-existent moves.

I liked the philosophy.

Maybe I should enter too.

In two days. My mood is low. I have to stop a heap-a things, and begin more. Addicted to sugar, and caffeine. Don't own up to circumstances... I point fingers. Make myself a victim. "Own events as your own doing." she tell-me good. "You wanted what's happened to happen. You've played it carefully the whole way through. You forget there's no parent-giving You must do as I says, external to your being. You are the parent now." I parent myself, handing down odious dictates. So I reel back, say magic words, that let strike truth. Yes. I wanted it this way. It had to be this way. But it hurts and sucks and I don't know how to fix it, so I blame. Balm innocents with anger, for their incarceration to my masterful plan.

It is my masterful plan. I jerk my own puppet strings. See my dance?!

Wife is completely hands-off. 'This is your thing. You have to fix it.

I can't fix it for you.' Dim callow candle-shows chalk on wall-the

Abe Lincolns, scratchy school lessons on blades of shovels.

No paper. No money. No success for spirit, to succeed.

New distraction:

Scientific Note:

Pfiesteria piscicida, the morph-dinoflagellate, is able to shift-shape, functioning radically as plant animal toxic predator benign cyst-sleeper amebic blob with hosts of other quick-change disguises. I must ebb and flow from strengths, from my prehistoric senses, to mesh to requirements environment produces. The sublime process of internal re-alignment, to stay emotionally centered-to stay out, away from the shell. Ah, for the ease it might be! My shell : A poor compensator, a slow dead king with no morph at all-only flicker allusion, tallow can/will dance.

The funny-named friend, who used to go as Earth 2001, says this, and other things too.

"I have looked at too many houses, and talked to too many people who I do not want to talk to." He expanded to Space 2001, last summer. A funnier name. Because he investigates the shell humanity emits, flexing his own. Distortions are telltales. He solicits thoughts of raw open-door people, looking for universe-reaction. He thinks we see shells flexing flowing to outer boundaries of thought. The universe mimics us we mimic it we're both trying to evolve and

it is a painful process. True.

I agree. Hang up phone. Click-click! Incoming.

Ignore it.

Silence.

I am drained.

Headline: Hurricane Damage is Escalating.

More shells to destroy :

Why are you doing it? Why is she still doing it?

I'm not doing it. I'm trying to remain open to doing it.

How come?

While my mind says its okay, my emotions get fried. That dichotomy fascinates me.

That's a bad reason.

It's more than that. Monogamy is rare in the animal world. I believe we are animals, down deep, and try to ignore this fact. What animals you know of are totally monogamous?

Ducks?

Nope.

Geese? They mate for life.

And fuck around.

(She is disappointed by this news. Tries to hide it.)

They found a shrew...

Oh.

And a hairless mole. I think.

But, if this process is so painful for you?

Look! I would not recommend this to anyone. It is... hell. It brings up all abandonment issues, the I'm not worthy of love shit, all the festering Now I've got a sibling, mom and dad are ignoring me memory, and a crazy rash of other heart-twisting stuff you'll never-ever figure out. But you know what? I still venture monogamy's a human invention, to keep things easier. I am completely assimilated into it, with no alternative teaching. If I blindly accept such programming, I'll never know what's real.

Maybe some animals are monogamous, even though the species is bawdy as a whole.

Just what I was thinking. But until you investigate, you'll never know where you stand.

I don't know if I could do it.

Most people couldn't, I'll bet. I mean, they could, but they wouldn't want to. Far too painful. High degrees of self-examination are required, which means compromising any integrity of the facade you present to the world.

How are you really doing with it?

Shitty. I don't know. Okay, for the moment.

What else is there?

Besides the moment? Try to go there, and you'll see how hard it is.

Your future and past are eroding coastlines, huh?

Landslides, any moment.

Ain't that the truth?

"You're sure you want to do this!?"

His bike looks like something from another galaxy.

"How's yours coming?"

"It's not. The seals we blew on Tiger mountain gotta be ordered! Two weeks at least, the guy said."

I was not a little relieved, learning it.

"And besides, my flimsy two-point-something fork travel is a friggin' joke next to… this fucking thing!"

"A bit over the top, ah?"

"To put it mildly. How many government secrets did you trade for is this alien technology?"

"Worth at least five grand, I'll bet."

"He's letting you borrow it?!"

"Rent. For staying at my house."

I look at a glamorously-twisted self in its highly-polished tubing.

"What's the fastest he's gone on it?"

I am now local-yokel, asking me that speed question, gassing a tank.

"He told me..."

"Wo-ah."

The numb-brr seemed completely insane.

Do I sound that mad, when I one-sixty-three mph-them?

'On that road? You went that fast on that road?! Shoot. It's rougher thana hog's back.'

And I think about the Mississippi simile. They probably do.

Think that.

But we missed the race. Cast a sixty-buck entrance shadow, anyway. Ferreted stuff out to people with cars, and went to breakfast. Ate big. Onedelayafteranother. Okay, we're late. But not too late to sniff rumored fresh blacktop roller coaster in old growth. My heartpounding, fighting to stay with Kie and his know the road seventy horsepower illegal import Jap 250 two-stroke with glue for tires that weighs just about nothing. Competition! Veins reamed out for the race. Two rolls of duct tape on old coat provides armor gainst rocks n-nasty blownout spills. They want five bucks for parking?! Sheet. Five for a semi, or five for a motorcycle? We were pissed! And broke. Walk trudging stuff down ski area road drop ceramic-magnet tankbag in dirt. Chains and studs dirt, fully half metal filings, adheres in the random pattern of a number. 42. Shoot! All dirt'll be like this one day. Plastic and ferrous bits. I-D-Chings, waiting to happen. But we missed it. Missed the record attempt and the sign up. Mmmm: I conditioned my-self. I thought back, interpolating missed minutes here (lube chain tighten where's 12 mm?) there (you seen my keys? Where's Warren? What do you mean you haven't walked your gaddam dog yet?). Too many variables. Too many bozos in minivans attending Snoquamie Days fast food railroad festival eat-alot a-thon. Roads Draino-clogged with overweight yuppie families doing the what you do on a nice weekend knee-jerk routine. But-why keep looking backwards?

I wouldn't-a paid sixty bucks for the opportunity to kill myself, anyway.

And b'sides...

It was appalling, really.

All the glitz and advertising funneled to brand-new sports. How ridiculous we'd have looked, without colorcoded proper pro-tective garb sparkle-flashed and neatly sprayed with raise-letter advertising ooglies. How hoe-key, wrapped head to toe in rolls of two-buck duct tape. Who are these people, and why were they allowed to enter? Obviously, they don't take the sport seriously enough. They are promoting Don't buy this shit cramming the display tables. Bad for business = Poor show. I walk a maze of freebies' enter your name we need info for more inane obnoxious mail lists late night phone calls temp high-tech tents next to manically painted super-rigs towing post-teen-age talent to next mega-bicycle event. Where am I? Is this the America of my youth? Where I skied in Levis and wool sweaters in the rain? With battered wood planks? The one where no kid had much of anything, all new sports were underground and hand-fashioned equipment from scraps was nearly-norm? Where is all this hype and greenback blowing from? I am becoming depressed. I remember making mountain bikes, before they existed. 'Existed' now = before retail purchase possible. You couldn't even buy a mountain bike, not that long ago... And now, this!

Who knew where my friends were!

Undoubtedly having more fun than myself, shmoozing pro riders' victual, food and drink, the sort national-hype provides. I am alone again... warped, with separation of myself. Trudging back to motorcycle, festooned with gear and clothing, strung on a crude coiled wire line. Dust choked the light blue color of my pants, to gray. What is this feeling? A lesser version of the one I got, thinking about leaving my wife. Foiled expectations? Abandonment? Love denies. I hate it here, but I must love it... Because I set myself up, to arrive. At my swinging gate... The barroom doors, plunging back and forth! I realize in my past, I always asked for criticism. Criticism was is working capital. I use critique (abet negative) to improve myself. Why is that? And more notably, does it even work?! Full of 'helpful' criticism fresh from persecuted perspectives. I'm not sure why the came to me-the fact seems connected through my depression.

The engine started normally.

Going to Whidbey Island.

Didn't really want to. Depression stifled my enthusiasm.

I'm going to drink a evanescence of Akaveet, with a pickled herring black bread side.

An old-friend ritual, coinciding with near-completion of huge log home, friend is single-handedly raising. Seems like a long drive. I smile at the ferry patrons, broiling in minivan suns, two deep and a mile long. I am the elite. Drive right past; they wave me aboard. Sometimes, rewards, for risking your life. On a murdercycle.

Down.

Breathing. I'm watching it.

Ritual alters the pace of time.

Breathe into your depression. Feel it fill with life.

A thought: My friend, who nearly succumbs to suicide. He tells me: It's not the manic side, it's the low that's addictive. Huh? What do you mean?

"I was hooked on the 'high' of depression."

"Like...?"

"When you're so depressed, you're fighting for your life (i.e., trying to find a reason not to kill yourself) you are the ultimate edge. You inhabit a maximal risk-zone, where it seems you love death, as much as life. It took me a long time to figure that out, about myself. You mean? I absolutely loved being depressed, and thought I hated it. See? I'm a risk-taker at heart. I feel right at home there."

It was some kind of major revelation to me!

I love receiving criticism, though it erodes my self-confidence.

I love feeling pain, but I don't. I feel right at home, in pain.

Hi! The house looks great.

We partied till early in the morning, slept out under the stars.

Why we never talked like this? Don't know. My friend is one in a million.

Exactly what I needed to hear.

Meteors streaked the sky.

You know, I tell myself, there are worms that live off methane ice, at the bottom of the sea.

And there are stars we've never thought of. More insects than counting can count.

Not only that, but the 1994 Mars Lander used vintage 1970's computer technology.

Technology recognizes reliability, over speed.

It's a long ride back.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Then you'll meet me, right?"

(I have to get back on that motorcycle?)

There is an old man observing the machine sky, and the bike-clogged driveway.

"Gotta lotto miles on that. Huh."

Question, or statement?"

He checks my odometer.

"Oh-guess not!"

Hear his longwind version of Ariel Square Four's nonexistent brakes.

"Ah. This is a really fascinating conversation; and I'd love to talk some more, but I've gotta meet somebody, and I'm terribly, hugely late."

Lie. Don't have to rush so much. On boring day, okay conversation.

Brake tale needs conclusion. Rituals demand beginnings and ends, for majorities of seekers.

I do my duty.

And rush there.

Doorbell. Harried. She surmises.

"What's the hurry?"

Recall:

When I find myself in the present, I wonder how I arrived-

welcome to the past.

Peel off helmet; she pours tea.

"Who cares, as long as you' arrive?"

"Huh?"

I naively ask. (Bugs on teeth.)

"Because it matters where you've arrived from, and why."

"Ah-s listening..."

"So where were you?"

"A vintage bike rally. At Teddy's."

Shows me her fist. It's dark blue.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Alarmed, she pit herself against a concrete wall.

"I wasn't on-center. When I punched, the target punched back."

She was learning Kung-fu.

"What was this, target?"

"The body I hit."

Waiting patiently for explanation. Me. This guy.

"I forced the punch. I didn't let it come naturally.

"The body's re-action got you?"

"Mas-o-meno."

(Not that she know da-español too well.)

Tworls our teapot. Three times. Preparing scary message.

I brace myself.

"You've got to let go. Life happens. Don't get outcomes stuck in goods and bads."

My stomach clenches. I'm being bludgeoned by epiphanies out of my friggin control.

"You refer to this it a lot."

"It-is the amorphous. It is useful to describe what can't be otherwise accurately detailed."

"As you were saying..."

I pull her back to the topic.

"Yes. When we're in the future, or the past (instead of the present) we are tethered by a force, as if a rubber band. If you try to keep yourself in one place, this stretch increases. If you do things to save yourself, try to throw your mood into a present moment…"

"Like with drugs, or..."

I'm thinking motorcycle. At one-twenty-or wherever some moment crowds all else out. I'm considering my mountain bike, screaming down a rock, root, and mud-infested swath.

No idea what's coming next.

"I'm with you."

She nods.

"You are stretching your rubber band to present. It takes a lot of energy,

or input to do that."

"True..."

"At some point your grip fades, and you'll go zinging back."

This is making sense. You slow at an apex of stretch-a point even further into future, past or depression than you started from. Zinging back again. Manic depressive swings of present future and past.

"You're always moving. You're never anywhere."

Not exactly solid points to punch from.

Ogles fist, to prove my thinking.

"Ouch!"

I've felt that, in my life.

She watches me closely for a moment.

"Slippery butter for your crumpet, sir?"

Distinctly sexual, in a war-torn mind. Driving myself a hundred twenty five towards the present, sling-shotting past, and zingging my strained rubber bands right back into a distant past. Forward again. More horsepower, the very items and times, I enjoy availing myself of, seem piss-poor excuse for enlightenment.

"More tea? The Eenglish-r sure it solves every ill."

I had some nasty stomach ache, without being punched.

No goods or bads. No outcomes assumptions or projections.

They're all rubber bands.

"Kiss and make up!" Kids are beating the hell out of each other, pulling down each other's pants-wailing on sexual privates. People go to jail for this, I'm thinking. Look how goddamned repressed we adults are! Repressed and confused. Total mayhem, mothers limp with entropy. I massage a two-kid mom's shoulders, as she slumps and drools. In those muscles, lay the weight of the world. I feel the calluses between us. Huge pads bore lead ingots.

"You feel like you have to maintain."

I tell her.

"You feel you have to bear the emotional load for your whole family."

I think she begins to cry.

"Your kids mimic this dissonance."

"What dissonance?"

"The depression, and fear, you're too afraid to show them."

"You're right."

Why was I telling her this?

"You think you have to be a man, and shoulder all burden."

I get the picture of a pack animal, trying to slip its bags.

"I feel like I'm the only thing holding us together. If I collapse, the whole boat goes down." As if she files the calluses often.

"You see that?"

A whirlwind of I need Ritalin.

That's repression, trying to coax a solution.

She gazes a diatribe of violence.

"That's your history. That child is the you, trying to get out."

Why is she using my impromptu X-rays.

And why is she?

We bend over thoughts like cartoonists, sniffing brain-damaging ink of 1932, drawing two million Snow White Transparencies. I sit there wondering if I'd ever have kids. Wondering if I used other people's "expertise" like this, 'cuz I couldn't find mine-own. Of course I did.

I take other people's perceptions more seriously.

That's a travesty.

She's a screenwriter,

duking it out with millions of others, for the perfect concoction of words. Of real+fake.

"I'm always looking for material."

She tells me.

"What kind?"

"Anything. Everything is material. Even the sound you're making, scraping your glass back and forth cross the table."

I guess I was a little nervous.

Her eyes are about three miles deep.

"You have a good story."

"How?"

"Just a hunch-but I can tell."

Brazilian, I'll bet. With Egyptian eyes. Her lids, painted with pale thin pencil, hypnotize me. I stare back, open to the core. (Or so I think.)

"Maybe you're right."

Demurely, I glance away, and take a hit of scone. Covered in powdered sugar, as if I'd remember to breathe out first! Somebody. I think her date

is about to slap me between my shoulder blades.

"You should be drinking beer, not eating scones!"

"You're probably right."

I dry-throat.

So I do. Drink and gab. Thick Guinness think-

if this woman's date wasn't here...

Which is odd. I'm married; but I'm not "married". Technically, I'm married.

But I can do whatever I want to.

(The sort of freedom that's disorienting.)

(The sort that doesn't feel "safe".) We exchange E-mail addresses

and with dread, I return to my ruts,

to my panic and sleeplessness. I am up against the wall.

My wife has a hundred and four temperature, shivering with the thickest down comforter, doubled over her fully-clothed body; a hot August room. Hoyt's 30th birthday destroyed last night's rest. I'm so tired, I can hardly drag myself to a laundry, to wash her soaking wet sheets.

Rest is a dream, I consider.

I feel terrible. I need to be outside.

Confined, contained. Compressed.

Waitress..."You're not having your usual?!"

Her thought, depresses me further.

A dark raven pass, casting tenth-of-second shadow on my cheery, outdoor table. Followed by earthshaking roar.

"I'll be right back!"

I yell, to waitress gaping straight up.

Fling off my wooped sandals, sprint bare-pavement to bleached, warp-board dock. Blue Angels. I prayed for angels. One knife-edges, directly overhead. Afterburners.

The air, torn to atmospheric shred.

I am exhilarated.

What's wrong with me?

I gather my sad shoes. Walk break-your-mother's-back crack back.

Door's open. Phone!

Townsend's calling. How are you? Moments; inclusive silence.

You want the truth? Of course I did. Do.

Suicidal. He says.

Townsend's lickin' my bad mood, hands down.

He's had a hard time. Loneliness. Health problems. Big ones.

Feeling emptiness.... despair… It's not because you're single. I tell him/myself. I'm married, and I feel lost too. We're all there... little dots of conscious trapped in huge chitinous shells. We think we're the shells; experiencing a pain of separation, between the hard part and the core. That space is the void. It's the nothingness we've reacted to. We long for the truth of ourselves.

I tell him about the strange sensation I just had, lying on my bed.

I felt ten or twenty times my normal size. I was a form of very crude crustacean, and the part of me everyone knew, was my outer skin. The inner core, was a man looking at Saturn, from earth, with his naked eye. It felt a whole galaxy away. Though it wasn't quite that far.

Cool dream. I tell him:

That's our task. We're explorers, looking for ourselves.

We're depressed, because we know we aren't, who we assume we are.

In some ways...

…It's the penultimate journey a human can make.

Thank you. And knowledge of the ultimate, as we know, is hard-won.

Makes you want to throw in the towel, blood soaked and rotten

with empty...

lonely,

tears.

Obnoxious buzzer, somewhere outside.

The dryer done. His other line beeped.

I hand the phone to my wife. Trying to be cheerful.

Sinking under the weight of my oppression, the mystery illness...

GRABBING THE DOOR HANDLE

afraid to let hinges creak.

I take the broken plastic bin

head to the damaged basement, past the well-watered flowers.

Suicide isn't contagious.

Right?

God.

What is happening to me?

The Blue Angels roared over.

I get on my motorcycle, and go to the practice show.

Something is wrong with my vision. Black dots everywhere, I...

can barely find the planes. Sitting with interracial humanity I wonder why

I was born white. The planes are too predictable. Cops write tickets to people trying to enfold themselves, in comforters against the blackness. Balance themselves between the poles. Get a little sanctioned enjoyment. But, before the traffic masturbation reached climax, I left. I want to feel the power-of yesterday. When I felt a little lad, screaming as planes blew over, and M-80s exploded. I went to the top of a hollow, where the trees still waved. One plane, fifty feet off-deck, shrieked overhead. Glass decides, whether or not to break. Unpredictable. Close the window of chance, prepare for big grandstand synchronization. Clear hollow top minimally, sub-speed o-sound. Barely. Yesss. This is what I came for.

Interspersed. Tessellate with juju in sky,

John Coltrain.

Some half-opened door. Some cold beer afternoon.

Adolph Sax cross wood with brass, create the brand new instrument. What would Jazz'v been without it? What would the world be, without that Jazz? Saxophone as mouthpiece of unspeakable emotion. What would I be with out speed? And sound. I lay on friends floor, and play bare-wood, empty living room passion, feeling ten volume sub-woofer vibes, toll organs' form. He's having a BBQ for strange people, who don't fit in.

You always want to, but you never do.

Why is that?

He asked me.

I do?

I leather-feet with moccasins, missing their linings.

Think of running fifty miles with a mouth full of water.... Spitting it out at the end.

Tough mutherfuckers. Indians. Initiation rites.

Think of Suicide.

A Craziness:

Like fishing. Stand next to river and stare four of five hours: People think something's wrong with you. Add fishing pole, and suddenly, you can stare five days. People envy you. Five whole days of fishing! Can you imagine the luxury? Pat "fisherman" silently on back. Avarice. Desire.

Imagine crying, for roadkill friend. Now-not eighteen years later.

Suddenly, I am crying.

Stub of pencil:

Desire to know. Write automatic.

You're flagging yourself. Don't stop learning. Look and listen to the signs of slowed movement. You're trying to reorient your sense of self-

So difficult, because you make it so with hurdles.

Hurdles are stalled moments.

Drop the pen. It is fit of disbelief, writing my self an autopilot letter.

Hurdles are energy that's stuck and vindicated.

Knock-knockk.

Visitors. Dispense beers all around. My wife is so sick, we talk animated chitchat, to take her mind off it. She is drawn into prattle, trying to escape pain.

"Going racing tomorrow. Wanna come?"

Kie offers. "Anytime between ten and three."

He has the cat turbo Porche 928 bought sight-unseen, with supposedly-blown engine. Heads off: Hmm. engine looks fine. Boy. Did summer look better yet? How dumb do you think that seller felt? Kie's sticky-stick tires, and die-grind DaVinci best friend did the port work. Nice Kie. But looks like a plain old car to me. Oh-but that's where you're wrong.

Okay. In that case, I'll be there.

Where, by the way?

SIR International Raceway

used to be in the sticks. Suburbia encroach, time clock to next housing development. It's Alpha club's track day, but they put Porche off high-horse, to vroom around too. Kie used to have an Alpha, he'd ground-upped from zero. He knows right people, here and there, for fun. Hot; still suffering from depression that started the moment I left the house. Seems I've come for speed, to forget the emotion, I have no-name to describe. Look! rubber chicken wired to old Super Alpha Romero, pinned in by reels of hose, darkened casting reek of blue-steel heat, dusty rags and assorted mad catastrophes of a 1950's hardware store, shaken stirred inverted on hot glacial race dust. Egads! Talk about love's labors! "Nice Car." Compliment knee-jerk, as he starts the beast. Kie is busy passing 9XXs, rigged for increased flirtation with "The dreaded 912 thing." nobody talks about. (Nobody but Alpha owners, that is.) I could hear some tons of bucks retiree rev-limiting the corner, in an ear-screeching whine. What is that thing? Backfire gave him away.

"Wanna watch at the stands?"

I'd met him once at a party. "Over... there?"

Some Alpha sounded way over red slow drifting loose pins and springs through wicked skidpad, corner. Sounded like it was six clicks from exploding-a woman with dish in hand hesitating, before chucking it against kitchen wall.

"They always sound like that."

Knowing man smiles. Tells me.

Was I grimacing, or chuckling uneasily?

How did he know I was asking?

(The nutsy part.)

Life plumet around wagging tail up down course for unreal rate of speed. It was the edge, and for a moment, I forgave myself. I Forgot the pain. One hundred fifty. Hairpin. Brakes: How can we stop this fast? Impossible. Rock up the painted barberstripe delineates one S from the next. We won't make it. We do. Kiss cone. Next straight-away. Pain creeps back. I want to drive now. I want the torrential pour of events no time to process them fully. Kie is blissing. Emotionally-charged walls are absent, in red-zone full-boost corners.

Thanks Kie. That was killer! (My seat soaked with sweat.)

His girlfriend arrives.

I give another girl a ride on my motorcycle.

She had never been anywhere. She is so open, I am awestruck. Aroused.

Her body was a precise sensual instrument, adjusting to cosmic vibe.

I imagine sex with her, and get turned on. I tell her:

You can tell a lot about somebody, by the way they're a passenger.

Oh really?

Part of my dread, was lack of honest intent.

If I was afraid to be honest with myself, how could there be honesty with others?

I mean true honesty, beneath surface events. A pathological liar isn't less honest than dolt with erroneous label : "I'm Honest." if label is never evaluated. (Liar might know he she is.) A surface honesty is all our culture requires for certification. Deep honesty required something more than facing events, and fessing up to fears. It required an excavation of a personality hidden beneath the chitin shell.

"Hon, I think I'd like to go out on some dates."

"Just to get even?!"

Nah. More like:

"To reprogram myself."

"What do you mean?"

I go along with women's wants too much.

She seems to get it.

"Don't hide anything."

"You either."

I call Teresa. She's a little hesitant, but relents with yes. We're at an outdoor cafe, talking. She is hiding. She knows she's wide open, so she looks away after a second or two, meeting your eyes. I am intrigued.

"What's holding you back in life?" I ask her.

"Why, do you want to know?"

"Because I ink-penned REFLECTION on an Idaho post card of a lake, and dropped over your business card, unknowingly. The word soaked into the paper of your name." I tell her.

"Self confidence. I'd have to say that's the big one."

Too many people told this drop-dead beauty she's dumb and ugly.

"What do you think your assets are?"

"She lists ones, perhaps not in her favor."

"What about creativity?"

"Not really."

Amazing. Like duck, claiming it isn't covered with feathers.

"Looks?"

"Not bad. Nothing special though."

"Personality?"

"Too shy. Not enough confidence."

The girl who dresses up in super-imaginative hand-made costumes paints her face and goes dancing. I am seeing myself in the mirror.

"I'm really hard on myself. I think."

How do we get confidence? I wonder. We are torn down, and then... What? We're fraught with old patterns of self-abnegation, judgments, and detritus. People have whipped us to cowering animals, hand us the cat-o-nine to continue the job ourselves. Society has, and continues to punish, those who can't fit in. Those who fight to remain themselves. Where do you find confidence? It doesn't exist. You have to dream it up. You've gotta leap a Christian existentialist chasm, and create it out of nothing. True life is nothing but faith in oneself. Faith is nothing by itself, it is a personal creation. That's why faith isn't rational. Faith does not translate from one person to another. She is so beautiful., I can't help imagining myself minus clothing, sipping my wine. And other fruits.

"We're in a special period of time, when we could each succeed."

I blurt, quite suddenly. Seems-undeniably true. I'm playing some sort of game, peering into the window of her soul. If I was honest with my thoughts, what would I say? Foil my chance, I'm thinking. Who cares? Foil what? A lot of repressed feelings of lust? I'm rapt listening to a worst of the worst dragging her down. She is hesitant with words, feeling self-consciousness' sharp pike. He'll think I'm dumb. He'll think I can't understand him. I see it-leaking out of your Pixie lashes. You're a model, painter, designer, sculptor, entrepreneur, computer-savvy twenty-six year old single mom of a ten year old, and you think you're no good?!

Jesus. What does that make me?

Worthless. I blow it when we say goodbye.

Three small

diligent kisses.

Midnight.

Hoyt's on his porch with Sandra,

his latest potential-lay. His latest vie for happiness. I can see his void not being met

with expectation it will be. They are drinking Australian Shiratz, pouring thickly, from dark-labeled bottle.

"Nice parking job."

My Yamaha blocks the sidewalk, facing wrong way down a one-way street.

"Looks like you're bucking sidewalk traffic."

His housemate emerges from sleep, yawning plea to crank down Mozart.

"There's no direction of travel on pedestrian walks. That's why I like them."

Housemate wonders if I'm kidding. If she looked in my eyes, she'd know.

We talk about eyes. Sandra describes herself, referring to others.

(Do I do this constantly, or only sometimes?)

We are asking questions, commenting on people we know.

"She's too uptight. She always wears sunglasses, so nobody can look at her eyes, to figure out how wound-up she is."

"Is that why she always wears shades?"

Hoyt likes the direction the conversation takes. He thinks his life's too easy, these days.

"Then there's Sharon, and Mike."

"Lynne's take on them is: 'She can't just get drunk, have wild sex, and throw up.'

It seemed profound.

And all he ever talks about is fishing and cars."

Yea. That's okay, for a while.

"Mike is a case. He'll spill his guts to girls, but never mention anything soft and mushy to guys. I always feel like I'm getting ripped off, missing his most interesting bits."

"Maybe he knows that's a tidy way to get girls in bed."

Hoyt and I love it. Sandra doesn't.

Selective truth amulets an audience towards reproductive ends.

"Maybe he thinks he has to with girls."

Which rang a little bell. I look at Hoyt looking between Sandra and I, talking.

His personality irises open and closed. Each glance triggers its preset.

Boy closed. Girl open.

Very interesting.

And in the days that followed, I became hopelessly ensnared in other people's priorities. The parental thing reared its guilt-riddled head, as I begrudgingly volunteered to take care of mom's aging cat, that shit all over the floor, and pissed in the basement corners. Took the rap for a number of incidents I didn't need to, to save friends embarrassments, picked family up from the airport in the middle of the night, to keep them in taxi fare, and did the slow burn wait at Suspension Warehouse, for an unscheduled two hour dink-around stop.

In its grin and bear it, I realized, I didn't have to.

"Hey guys, I gotta go."

"Huh?"

Didn't get it.

I'm tired of other people's stuff. I'm too damned nice.

I drag my mountain bike from back of the truck, and pump its tires for street.

"You're leaving?!"
I can't spend the whole day like this.

"How you gonna get home?"

Didn't have the foggiest. I'd never ridden here before.

"I'll figure it out."

Zoom! It was a sunny day.

Wind on face.

I flash SIR's jacked-up Pintos-n-Mustangs waiting for entry. Night drags. Void killing… Powerlessness. Big hood scoops, nitrous under trailing arm of roll cage. Men and adrenaline. G-forced rushes. Where were toe-line barefoot n-pregnant wives? Tending home. Ironing blue-white shirts for next day's work. And it occurs to me : these men aren't going to give up easily. They're gonna fight the erosion of roles to bone-chilling death. Because that'a-all dey been raised ta do. This emotional cave-in I've been weathering-At least I've gathered some tools to deal with it. All the men who think they have something over women... That they have clean, gender-differentiated role to play for the world. Wow. It all tumbles down. Women can do anything men can. Except that. Who cares? Hypo or turkey baster. One shoots a thousand gals. The women get stronger, and more self-confident every year. They have more roles to assimilate, while men get less. Super-mom, super-business woman, fit athlete compassionate striving self-actualized sexually liberated woman. No more hunting and less warfare. No men needed to provide for nuclear family. Women have kids and men don't. What are men for, and why do we letting them run the show? Questions. It's going to get nitro-hot rod ugly. There will be more speed and violence, more killing and mayhem, because men won't make treason's transition well. They were never taught to deal with the chaos of emotion. Except to repress, break things,

and burn rubber to forget.

Menacing.

Some jerk revving his engine at 45th street freeway onramp. A silly stock five liter Mustang with attitude exhaust. I try to ignore them. They're fullabravado Mexican margaritas, about to make the statement. Lit em, and disappeared down the concrete runway. Wanna cut in front of the fast no-guts cyclist, do ya? AdrenalineTestosterone roars in me. Goddamn cars. Think they own the dumb-assed roads. Lousy good for nothing SS-Ego Petroleum flagship... Tach climbs. Not this time boys. Dropped it one gear, two… Twin lanes merge to concrete-abutted one, directly ahead. They're going pretty fucking fast, all right. Commit with slipped clutch full throttle speed-shift next click one-seventeen by strict revo-reckon. Slip by. Rocket by, to the relative observer. Crazy... What... made me do that? Is this the base male response? I'm the mass of neurotic filaments, programmed by an inability to express myself clearly. Thinking I'm liberated! Ha!-The obscene part. Reminded me of wacko radio hour, where they play things you've never heard before. Tribes from buga-bugo. Ukrainian dirges. Quiddidy Synthicizots, constructed by blind quads. I'd pounded my superior-listening wide-mind music ear 'gainst parent's narrow range of acceptable sounds. I thought I was so enlightened. I listened to everything. But I didn't know this strange sturdy worldwide history of acoustics existed, did I?

And furthermore, did I even consider that mass of screams and hoofbeats, "Music"?

Narrow minded son of a bitch.

Like thinking

I was honest.

Clean the shit off da floor, and water da overhead pots.

The cat, is irrevocably dying.

It's a girl! They name her Reality. Tried as they hippie-holdout might, but the name didn't stick. Her friends call her Rea. In the old days, she was Realie. Like: Really!? as a kind, kind-of joke. The softest form children are capable of. Rea, the unhappy, brilliant and seemingly lighthearted youth, people cluster around. She has magnetism, and comes with a mane of glossy jet-black hair. Here's the radiant being raised in the sea of love depraved kids dream of, with loneliness-embodied at her core, no one's allowed to see. Stray human in nest of grumbling inner-conformity, oligarchic panel handling down her digressions-she is judge and jury. She is stuck in a no-tool loop, tools scattered, all around her. She sees them, but she is powerless to reach, or decide which banged-up spanner for rusty, unknown bolts. This is the hell of being female. "Isn't it?" I ask her. "I don't know what you mean." "You're caught in a spiral of knowing, bleeding from a resulting wound of turning knowing on yourself,." That caught her. She's on her period. I could tell. I know she's a full-moon type girl. The gold-white shimmer

on a lake, so recently warmed by the sun.

"How long have you known me?"

A long time.

Does it matter?

"Sixteen years."

"Long enough."

For what? I wonder.

She talks life. Reads me her journal.

"I can't believe I'm reading you this!"

says she. "I've only read it to two people in the whole world, and then, only once." asides, reveals-story at hand. Very revealing. Masturbates, staring at her mirror, to see her soul escape, that climactic instant. She leads me to its moment, describing hand caressing stomach, slipping between her legs.

"Ah, that's pretty interesting."

(Understatement.)

"What do you see?"

In the mirror. Of your eyes.

"Loneliness. And space."

I vow to try it myself.

"How are you doing with your wife, by the way?"

She blushed for everything she found herself saying.

"...If you can talk about it, that is."

Shit. If you can talk about that...

Everyone is interested how we're turning out. In vein, they want failure. They watch us as Indy 500 cars, waiting for a fast-gas flying parts pile-up. In truth, they'd like it to work. They want to believe this is possible; and not as an idea, where you pull on protective suits, before strapping yourself to the 'non-monogamous' A-bomb. Spectator of emotional blood sports, is close enough.

"I'm doing okay. When I first got home, I was poised on the edge of keeping it together, so her affair sent me over. Now I'm stronger, and it isn't such an ordeal."

I was dating. Rea was highly intrigued with this concept. She would soon go on a double date with my wife, and the frisky friend.

"Tell me about your dates."

She coos.

"Strictly G-rated, so far."

"Who are they?"

I explicitly relay Amazing Stories of new person weaned. Myself. An Iranian girl with Sound-of-Music-escape, age fourteen when their Shaw went down. Sold everything buy dad from the firing squad, the false passports, border crossing nights refugee camps. From a good life, to nothing at all. Sexy as hell. Smart. Going for the stars. Film making-atheist needs to leave something profound behind. Two weeks out of her mirror-relationship marriage, that lasted six years. I get the details. Her creativity is profound. All that pain... Slapped a proposal on TV producer's desk. Said she didn't care if he liked it or not. Drunk. Whisky's best for forgetting. Hired her, four hours later. Passed out. Phone message squawked unanswered good news.

Rea's all ears.

"And she's only twenty-four!"

Meant like: All that, in only twenty-four years!

Men! I can tell that, too. Disgusted. Always attracted to the fresh flowers, drenched in honey. 'Do men think dating younger women makes them young too?' Never thought about it. I thought about it, right then. In my case... I'd say... I'm mostly attracted to thin women with an unquenchable zest for life. And I'm sorry to say, age is hard on criteria. I very seldom think about it. The sun that burns the brightest, is where I go to tan.

She laughs.

"You're pretty white, for a sun worshipper."

I used to care about that, once upon a time.

"I mean metaphorically, of course."

She's thinking : There's no such thing. I tend towards agreement. The conversation happening in black space facade, life provides. I hear the gears whizzing around, consuming energy intended for higher things. Our minds are burning too much fuel in the lower atmosphere, indenturing to take us to "heaven". They are sacrificing the stars, to keep out facades intact.

I tell her so.

"You know, I'm honored you were able to tell me stuff, like this."

"Like what?"

She knows. She is testing my answer.

"Things about the real you, under Rea's facade."

Ten minutes pass, I see my loneliness too.

And the fire. And my innocent self. It's endless space.

The final frontier, is right inside us. Waiting, to be discovered.

On Friday. Sold a computer program for three hundred bucks, and picked up the check. Seller's sulky acne-pimpled brother shoots silent looks of self-mock disdain, alerts me to painful directions. A mental giant trapped in insufficient body of no self-confidence. He is aria opposite, trying to cloy me with his superior, knowing hush. I am full of compassion for genius confined to hastily-averting eagle-black eyes. I have to go. The charade is too much to bear. There's an underground party I have to know about, peopled with such rejects, and outcasts from normality. Gotta get the scoop, where you'll expect to encounter fringe of gin-soaked adepts, experimenting with things nobody's bothered considering, once science poo-pooed the adherent. You'll find strong drugs, synthesized music (constructed from high-tech circuitry scabbed to analog war surplus radar in huge 500 volt consoles). Don't bother to ask where the party is, until a week before its time nobody is quite sure of. And to find out, you'll have to hang in the places you're never sure to see the right people when you most expect to encounter them. Or when you need to. Its directions, if you manage to get them, are up some logging road, past this and that, with no guarantee of actually arriving. It is believed that those who make it, were meant to. So I'm waiting for a sign. I'm sitting at a table with a pint of Dead Man Ale, wondering what's next. Two men join me. One tells me a story about a man who went fishing. Catching nothing, he resorts to a stick of dynamite. His dog, a fabulous retriever, is with him in the boat. Next thing this man knows, his dog jumps out, to retrieve the burning red cylinder. "Imagine the fisherman's thoughts, as he oars furiously away from his treasured companion, eh? Just imagine it!" I get eerie feelings it is a story of "truth".

Is this sign?

The other fella's a lean wiry product of Chicago's bad-assed ghettos. The only thing between him and total insanity is a pint and hour, or two big bong hits. He fairly radiates pain-inspired intensity, with quick continence, witty tongue, and eyes answering questions with piercing dates, and prominent names. I recognize the cut of visionary cloth. They are sculptors and casters of huge bronze monoliths. Their lust for life is insatiable, as it currently manifests in thirst for thick black beer.

"When my studio burnt to the ground, I thought my life was over."

Burly mountain man, six-five two-sixty verily spake.

"Then I met an old master foundryman, who must'a been eighty. He had a young cutie on his arm, and laughed when told him my bad luck.

"Son, fire's your savior. It purges your past. I lost two foundries, in my time."

as if he's pleased about it. Things were going well. We were screaming a good deal, and on the verge of tears. Even in that bastion of originality, Seattle's Blue Moon, people thought we were weird. Then when I brought out my stuffed armadillo purse. God knows why I'd been carrying it around. Thing was so damned insane, it made me laugh incredulous every time I unwrapped it. Twenty bucks from a vintage clothing store. Caster Edward grabbed it, stood on the ass-worn, initials-carved bench, and held it aloft-cutting coup for ten or fifteen drawn-out blood curdle war whoops. At whose moment, somebody I hadn't seen in twenty years sat down to sell us "fat eights", as if we needed to loosen up some more with Polio-strength Northern Lights Sodium bud. I think the bartender winked him over, to pot-paralyze us. But no. The bartender counted us no-cover, indigenous entertainment. I'm thinking it's really too grand, I have to write some notes, as three pool games with a one-armed man began, an the last two fatal pitchers were poured. Drunkenness is a dream. You think

you'll remember insights the sweet spot of alcohol provides, and in the end, they are drowned in lethargy's worldly excess. My companions were over the edge of their furious wits,

and social remonstrations.

We were sliding fast into insight-forgetfulness.

I fought to retain their lively stories, and subtle not-so hues of admirable passions;

left, trousers stained with sloshed stout beers-

Immediately met what I'd come for.

"How ya doing?"

"Fine. Hey; you know about the party?"

'The': slightly accented.

"Yea. Got a hand-copied invite today."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure. Back at my place."

Can we hurry? Haven't pissed... Afraid I'd miss mayhem

that couldn't be repeated. Got it.

No sleep.

Got a date with the almond-eye girl.

Everything is wrong. A friend's car broken. "Can you give me a favor?" Lift. No gas. Reserve light. Late as hell. Cop headlights probe license plate. Lost my wallet. No money. Seven minutes till punch-in, drivers-obeying posted limits. Infuriating. Calls. FAXes. Needed the pictures yesterday. "How early can you deliver them?" Nine. Two hours sleep night before Blue Moon's Howl. Hungover. All-nighter tonight. House guest unattested to. Soaked washing draping the bed. Sewer overflow, in the tub. Stinks! Incense barely covers plumbing catastrophe-I'm speeding away from, bum a crumpled dollar for gas, twenty five cents for a phone call. "Make yourself at home!" Guilt. (I really should have oriented her, while I was home. Get the portable phone-I'll give you an apartment tour : Twisted Hospitality. Fiber optic hellos. Meeting Persian artist, race reckless too much caffeine to rendezvous, grab AIDS Walk-mailer, and document the excess. Everything happening way too quick. Need fifteen things at once, have time for three, if shit were actually together. All things ask abstract. Thought about 1945 military jeep just bought, for a rubber-check grand, snoozing SOS, sixteen years in Eastern Washington's barn. Deal-o-rama. But... I did that to... Ground myself? Skin my knuckles with SAE wrenches, and remember I'm alive? Overload a jam-packed schedule further? Gaddamn. I need my head examined, not re-deranged.

Hi. Hi. Hoyou?

Sparkles on her throat, and arms.

Star tattoo visible, just below the neckline.

We're at cozy bar half my friends by cosmic fate, arrive at. Intersect infinity, on weather vanes' crazy-changing wind. Maximum margarita fishbowl rings my head-better clear. She's wearing that skimpy tight dress open toes on the back of a very late-night. Wouldn't want to road-rash the innocent skin-graft victim. So we blow the loose jazz passé scene, and walk to the lake, find a bench... you know. Make out. Before I know, she's astride, mens Levis undone, tight skirt up an' lacy under-ware lyin' all hot n steamy on our freshly watered grass. What happened? What is... happening? No past tense.

Is what I should be asking. Is.

Do I want this?

The animal-rutting thing.

No. I want the sensual human hour-foreplay deep-connect deal.

The intense moment love intimacy universal.

So I stop the train. Amazed.

Have I ever done this before? I have arrested the cycle-skip red anger record powerlessness sex abuse total concubine too young to figure it out thing. That abandonment, of what really gets me going. And I've done it with grace. I tell her: Let's use this connection, not fuck in the park with cats prowling car headlights piercing stranger in the night. And she agrees. And she cries. It's what she was too afraid to ask for. Later. Call me.

Return home, filled with love for my wife. She is a complex chessboard. The possible moves are endless. We set ourselves for learning, and struggle no-chart territories. I mean, I set myself, and she's open-minded enough to take it. But she's in a three hour schlep your sleepless body South commute to work a 14 hour shift no-linger day, flat-out in bed. It's hard to maintain.

I am filled with mighty nightmares.

Alarm. Can't read the numbers LED burnout.

Mad dash to the stock agency, draining three hour sleep almond coffee, petting their dog. What was my hurry? Have another half of muffin, as they pour over the last-minute organization of 35mm transparencies. Kick back, and watch the light play off the old black man, washing the windows Beautiful. Why don't white people age this gracefully? Black: Associate this word. Evil dark demons unknown sinister shadows wrong money... hmmm. Am I programming, with this? His skin shines early morning sweat. I want my camera. Why is black so "bad"? The couple concentrates on mind-eyes images, locked in chemical action. Roar back the Boulder house guest's about to leave. I have succeeded avoiding her energy traps. Doesn't feel enlightening, but at least I passed. Walk her to Bus Stop. The bus comes. We stand there; the bus leaves.

I realize, I haven't said what I need to, yet.

"It's hard to articulate this..."

No it isn't. You're worried-bout rebuff. Why is it hard to be honest? She feels cold-shoulders of hidden truth anyway. She's upset with emotions reserved for reserve.

"I almost didn't invite you to come."

"Why?!"

Paisley dress reflects her sheer, see-through light.

"Because..."

Tact. People have so little of it. Or too much!

"You're a-little closed. You open up enough to suck people in, then your iris shuts down, doling out whatever scraps of insight you think are necessary, to keep people interested. You see, I realized towards the end of our acquaintance in Boulder-it would take more energy to open you up, than I'd get back."

She is shocked.

"But don't get me wrong! I think you're an amazing person underneath. I just can't spare the attention to excavate your secrets." Little did I know, I am sorting tailings of myself.

"You..." Not you. "...I mean, we..."

She opens up. We are the same. Mirror-playing.

We are stuck in nascent patterns of opening, rarely making permanent inroads to Di Magino Line defenses. I tell her that I = We. We are now solving a problem together.

She is crying, and I cradle her head in my arms.

"I haven't cried in public for over a year. Thank-you."

Everything becomes, as it should have been. We part, as we could have met.

Bus leaves in a cloud of diesel exhaust.

It's now later than I thought.

Time is ticking. I've got a million things to see through. Trying to pay attention-going from A to B. Man with strange leashes caught corner of yellow flower, red fire hydrant eyes. I spy two musky ferrets cuddled, doing elastic-spine cuteforms in red blazer arms. Stop: Hello. All the introduction he needs. "You like 'em? They're the greatest pets ever." Claims, kisses big one's inquisitive snout. "Like otters, or impertinent troublesome kittens. Totally adorable for life." His cigarettes excavated from depths of breast pocket. "See?" Shirt bulge: upended stretch-rodent chews cardboard.

"What dog is this playful?"

They dance for me in the morning, when I grumble about work.

I am reminded: Life is for play.

As it begins to rain.

Bicycle tires slip oil-stained concrete.

Not going anywhere. Cars splashing me. One yells: Goddamned cyclist! Think you don't have to follow the laws! Ridden a red, hadn't I? Yell back, oblivious of gun-toting, shadow-syndrome psychopaths. Fuckin lard ass! Get out of your lazy goddamn whatever I said, and ask me nice-Like that saves the planet! I'm allowed to run stop signs cuz I'm risking my life out here with you idiots! It's my paycheck for you and the rest of these morons global warming all this exhaust I've gotta breathe!

Don't feel better about it.

More angry than ever. I want to erect banners across freeway overpasses-CARS ARE RUINING AMERICA. Under which, I'd add: & You're Guilty! Plenty of time to read it, idling their no-movement lives away. Add me to 'it', and wallow the reflection. Grim. View gridlock, considering ferret-man's life. Stopped-up something. Ferret : his version of universal love? Are those beasts his permanent fix of cosmic acceptance? Of... huh... Unconditional love? He's us. He's using his conduit of furry inquisitive animals, like most people use others. Have babies, relationships, friends, or if that doesn't' work, drugs, BMWs, watch yourself in the shine of our paint. Are we filling void's inside? Or not?

Rains harder.

"Hey..."

I buy two Perkasets from street dude, his stolen drugstore stash-"...bruthr-man, I gots-a..." at a stopsign. Two bucks for Mad Dog; heads to a bar-mix martini special 4-8 weekdays with unheeded warning. Void is hungry: needs filling big time. The waitress has painted-on smile. Nero boyfriend has the common ego problem. I overhear, between-pour telephone laments. She's angry and depressed. He isn't Mr. Forever. He's closed; not open enough. They have been dating six weeks. I sip, and contemplate the tragedy of sexes. I am open and sharing; he is analytical and has to have space. Her nipples are hard. It's over. It's hardly even begun. Drop a cherry in the Piña Colada. Tear welling slightly; brush arm across, pretending hair out of place. Small talk customers emptiness; call friend back: see ya. 10 minutes. Smoke.

Spoon hits, inside glass.

Patrons…. Whoa.

Grim. Asp bites, sinking fangs into soft tissues need to protect. The pills mellow the sting. I can barely feel poison, as it courses my vessels. Having a good time with the tatters of human-being this bar secretes. My budget martini is excellent. Sapphire, never tasted better. The teary-eyed girl is rat-in-a-maze, like the rest of us. Ferreting love, chewing cardboard cigarette boxes, too curious to see what's inside. We are suffering in the invention we created. We are starving, trying to find holy grail we can food-bar, till you know what happens. Experiment over. Her role-playing to Mr. Mystery Pathetic, is simultaneously endearing. The scientists in each of us watch, while contagion occurs. A black jazz band assembles its late-night conquest of white-America yuppies, who can't move fer-shit. I sip another martini, so announced. She asks me a question. I make her half-laugh. Drink free. What a lovely game. I can see addiction to these. To bad the car driver didn't catch me here, under the amusing cloud society rains. There's even a shred of humor in the $#@^&*!! Collection-agency's extortion to my bank account. Didn't do it, but you still have to pay. Plus interest seven years sorry, but not really, you never got notification cuz we forgot and the court have no records anymore. Fucks!. Destroyed my nylon dental frayed thread of belief the system isn't just in it for money. Mood evaporating with anger.

Think of something less volatile.

Man blows sax; tests microphone.

Beautiful face : lie. It is wholly… sublime. Afraid to mention the depth. It is shocking. The musician with eyes like Native American, in Edward Curtis dream. He is stunning, not 'beautiful'. Woman whispers to friend. Friend nods head imperceptibly, asking her Don't make my up-tight homophobic xenophobia laid with sweet PC-cheese frosting, imagine men 'beautiful'. I can't take it. I'm screaming out the Tibetan Book of the Dead, gargling my drink. We're all demonizing his darkness. His color is the void. And why is the void so scary? I am appalled. 'Go to the light!' Go the way of God-radiance, brilliance, sun, illumination, white. The tunnel through the ignorance, the nothingness, the eternal damnation, of Black. Shit. Garbage. Divinely-sanctioned hatred. Look at this man! Listen to music he hints, with solo notes! The pills are kicking in, big time. I am bombarded with the void of my existence, hating it, as I hate all recollections of my inability to deal with self. I can read it all over xenophobe's face, trying not to abdicate my reality. To bigotry. To self-depravation. You're attempting to make life a melting pot, so you won't have to take the imagery to heart.

Whoa. The stool feels very high.

In the reflection of the highly polished floor, I see evidence of falling.

Jazz man, plays sweet notes.

God speaks, thru him.

Swing-Lo.

People drowning together. One saves the other, in the form of unknown sacrifice. Both loose energy, though one thinks gain, baiting other's radiance. A mutual dance of decline; vampires mirroring losses, attracted by carrion, deprivation : that deeply-carved gouge. That bottomless friggin' canyon. Our inability to take the leap. "Faith"- if you know what I mean.

I remember lifesaving class, age 12.

It nearly killed me.

In the limbo of not knowing what to do next. Burning Man about to happen in Nevada, a yearly chaos and anarchy festival, filled with fire-crazed idiots, weirder than weird artists gawkers gear heads and freaks. I could ride my motorcycle, but Seattle was currently drenched in its usual cold wet fusillade of Summer, and time was reeling in. I wanted to go slower, taking the old Kawasaki. But not in the rain. My whole life needed packing up, and suddenly, I had one day to do it. I was stressed and depressed, anxious about my relationship, and the future in general. Money was running out. Pandora's box was open. Flames were shooting out, burning with cryogenic cold. Too many things to do paralyzed. Makes body unable to move any direction. I am lost in the web of too may possibilities. Help! Humans walk by, strollers neat son daughter defined lives groceries underneath, cars sans-mortgage 2:00 time for the beauty parlor lives with men eating sack lunches round tables dirty pants burly arms watching them walk. Words fail me. Work to support this maddening crowd; work to support you supporting them, so they can support you back again. We're all in the madness together. Dishonesty is everywhere; I try not to ratchet lower, realizing: This blatant illustration just to show me, myself? I see dishonesty everywhere, because I see myself. What I do with endless possibilities?-I know down deep what to do but- discrepancies of fear=dishonesty, make me depressed. The too many options option, occludes claritytruth. It occludes hot sun of what's right for me. I gather the infinitepossible round me, to confuse truth.

This thought is depressing.

Dishonesty silences knowledge.

Inner knowledge : What we claim we want until, inner knowledge is terrifying.

So what's up? Don't we know we're avid to avoid terrification?

Terrified, as a science. We want inner knowledge?! No. We want inner knowlege objectifed, and externalized, into an oracle. Whose abstract perfection needs official translators. Needs alters with fruit piles of nice stones and wormwoods. Needs for channelers councilors therapists psychologisms specialists psychiatrists runes and I-Chings tea lies palmistry gypsy tarot signs judges regulations authorities armor loved-ones reductionisms science theory pundits protagonists experts psychics and last of least analysts. We wanna be told who we are what we should do what will happen and how to swallow what's already gone down. We need others to ferret strengths and weaknesses out. Because others keeps us locked-up inside.

We pass a responsibility of self-responsibility, on.

Don't want to know exactly why we're unhappy, let alone, recognize tools to fix it ourselves.

Time continues hut-hut! march. Have to call UPS measure box weigh it decide how I'm going and where what I'm doing tonight seeing almond-eyes one lust time what I'm packing flying driving hitchhiking motorcycling sheesh! I know all the answers, but am to overwhelmed to start asking questions.

"We need this break."

My wife says.

"At first, I though only you did, but I see for us to be equal when we meet again, we both have to change. Things will happen to you in San Francisco. A lot of things. I can feel it." Pause. [As long as it takes/I love you.] "I couldn't relate to what you were going through. I understand it now. You were trying to save the relationship. I'm sorry I've made you do it all by yourself."

I begin to cry. The weight of it, recognized.

"But for it to have worked, you probably had to."

Hits bottom. Verily, climbs back up. The woman knows intrinsically, watching cancer patients die. Sometimes the last minute help keeps you from knowing yourself. Patient misses peace, gushed-over by families throw themselves at shell's painful reckoning.

Illusion must break down. Isn't pretty, but alternatives are worse.

Long run. Sun breaks for nine-minute stint.

A sign? More coming?

And for the moment

I'm at peace.

The interplay of light and dark. Founding photographic principle. "White" light lumps all colors together-a chaotic mishmash. White's amalgamation robs red and blue-their distinct identities. I watch flaming orange-hair man, bespecked with bright freckle, munch bagel. Is he "White"? An African, walks black as the ace of spades, and the card's bad luck? glints sweating noble brow twenty feet from sitting American Black barely more colorful than Brazilian girl. Is that Brazilian girl "White"? When isn't she? "White" diminishes. I am thinking about the void we carry round inside us. I see everywhere, in sidelong glance at shiny new shoes, and whistles at women, wistful dreams of love. Bombarded with "blackness"-its empty raw wounds. It's purest rancor. Feel seething-attempted respect-mock tussles, the life-death blows dealt to walking would-bes, around me. I expect battles of result, in sinister drawn-out scars. The synchronous moments of truth we carry around outside. Dangerous. There, for the assimilation! LOOK OUT! They say.

Looking is mandatory.

I am...

Trying to define black and white. So I'll let go of their definitions.

Socially-conscious peeks under welcome mat of bloody Moor crusades. I count the bodies of the Jesuit wills, watching thar horror, white man Spanish is he white? The Portuguese ditto, the English the and the rest who perpetrate indigenous brethren of the world. I am the descendant of murdered cultures' foreskins. Read my bible. Were we "white"?

I am...

Trying to dissolve dualities of "Black" and "White".

I am trying to notice race, not throw human fodder in un-dynamic meld pots. This is all… very confusing. Life seems to grind to a halt : Am I still leaning on things? Am I myself? What do I think? Of course I am. What are these props? (The Kurtz, ad-horrors)

trying to imagine what I'd do in the 1950s. Would I be marching?

Which side would I have been.... on?

Scary thought. A product of 1960's upbringing.

Understand, when people of color make you unwelcome. You murdered their ancestors.

But I didn't. I loved them.

A king-no-clothing joke to think, it's possible to abolish this war. The dynamic black-white, is polar reaction scream. Love that sound. Listen to its music, closely. I am marching. Aren't I? That is important. Celebrate the courage to do so. Stand for what you believe.

Too much thinking. I trust its self-serving, and open a dog-ears book. Scrawl a woman's name under title page, back and forward. My wife's…

It's a cool-sounding name.

I'm grasping

at the door of a panic attack..

It's a first-date, anniversary five year re-do, and man at earlier coffeehouse gives me double (not single as ordered) = easy quad, in that place. Which isn't good. I'm freaking-out the five year milestone bad-dreams, or because I'm slightly obsessed with screwing lithe Persian sex kitten-not kosher, last few days with wife? Difficult to even bring up, especially this day. I must be honest. Now circumvents never. Figure what I've eaten that day, wonder if slipped LSD. I'm sitting in a Greek restaurant of our first date ordering rezina wine. "Is this what they drank at Symposiums?" I ask, imagine Plato plus Socrates, pin the mental giants to walls of their intellects. Mostly, to avoid hysterics. I feel I'm going to puke, start screaming maniacally. Am I happy? I should be. You're sitting at the take of the movie that changed your entire life. What happened? What do you feel right now? How can you re-invent? How will you feel anew, with racing blood between you? How it always sexists? I ask myself. I can't concentrast two states. I am not connected with her, when by all accounts, I should be. I am elsewhere, manic and fearful. This reality is hard to swallow. They bringing us heaping plates of fools gold, which we eat without appetite.

In less than a week, you're going. It's true.

I am afraid for us. Nobody

daring to say it. I have to let go of you. I can't be waiting here. Anything can happen.

She looks at me, as she's me. We are so tragically together, and apart!

I am still stifling everything.

Later, I'll listen to Nat King Cole sob the couch,

ripped by all the sublime terror that moment.

I was going soon, for walkabout in, California.

"Bring the single Brock back again." she tells me.

That state of mind. When I met you

She meant.

And the strength I need to dare? No place.

Read the mountaineering book, which takes breath away. Tony Kurtz dies with a frozen arm on Swiss Eiger's North Face My god! The stuff men were made of back then! Narrator hard-heart grovel for Kleenex, tell me heroic tales. Phone rings what's up? I attempt to convey awe. I'm reading this book… and did you ever think the world's too self-centered now? Flashing back on the guides, thoughtlessly risking own lives to save the 'lunatics' climbing that face. Man with injured hand hears avalanche. No question or thought-grab the climber below you. Decrease your chance of survival. Split-second action (no re). What's happened, that we move both hand to an ax, with its perilous grip into ice, to save ourselves? Quote-If one compares the stature of man with that of the Face, man simply disappears. I would never have believed that this knowledge could suppress the human spirit like a nightmare; one felt so lost and lonely.-Unquote Incredible. Our Invincible Spiritus… What drives you, with hemp ropes frozen and stiff, through missiles of falling rock, river-soaked clothing, no food nor sleep? You're Exposed. Lightning crashes around you. Metal glowing, sparking... The bodies halo supernatural statics... Because? "Mountaineering transcends all every day matters. It transcends all national frontiers"? The…

Scary, darkness and light… no confining notions.

I guess I had better be a climber.

"Hey. Look at this wiggly line."

"Is it paved?"

"Guess so."

\ "Is it faster?"

"Long side-ova triangle."

"But is it going to be faster?"

"Donno. More scenic probably."

"Okay. Where do I turn?"

"Right here!"

Freeway hairball lane-overs to micro-off ramp, brake.

35 miles, sign: Road Closed Ahead. We ask. Nobody quite sure. But you guys live here! (Locals last to know.) Attendant runs over, makes us swear not to go.

"We went seven miles in a Jeep and had to turn around."

Gas-thirsty Buick disagrees. Tells us barricade gates r-unlocked.

"No prrroblem."

Red velvet cavalier analysis.

Who to believe? Naysay, or macho-dude?

One lane. Barely even a road. Examine overload top-heavy burning men vehicle.

"You sure you wanna try this?" I ask Hoyt.

I'm worried about your shiny usednew car.

Backtracking. The attendant, with his fear for the intrepid. U-turning.

"Fuck it. It's only a car." Hoyt addles, swinging wheel-round again.

I'm impressed. How come? Takes guts to flick off fear.

Beautiful road, unlocked gates, as billed.

Totally passable.

(Life-Metaphor) Were are we?

Hot springs steaming through cold river. Stop dip road wearied-feet. Official springs of healthseekers ahead. Z-that us? Relax you bleary eye 300 mile Labor Day traffic-patrons. Sleep well to shuffle in and form two lines, to contemplate large institutional pans of same-hue different-viscosity food. I think square stuff is coffee cake, put jam on. Hoyt thinks biscuit, ladles cashew gravy all over. Jonathan sure cashew stuff drenched oatmeal.

"How do Vegans live like this?"

"Good question."

Too salty for cake, too sweet for a biscuit. No coffee. Caffine-free tea. Honey is better no sugar. "The whole idea of detox, is so you can tox-up again! Right?"

Affirmative nods. All that hot water naked body sweating for this? For the hard-floor off-white industrial gut mortar at three loud gongs' eight am? Hung as hell from collective no-sleep pre-drive departure ordeals, and three paralyzed milky-way hours of the far wild pool. Everyone, we decide, is entirely too lovey-huggy for this no blood-caffeine level. But staff walks by with cheese omelet and onyx java running from cup, talking walkie-talkie. SqualK! Eco-man volunteers to do dishes in a flurry of unpaid humanitarianism. I watch him pour 200 plates' phosphate into three gallons hot water, scrub two bowls, two spoons, one glass. ZZZZzzzzz… Empty basin.

Boy thinks he's done good. Reeeel good.

I wonder. Lot of rules, written and unspoken. For general good? Wonder more. Would I want to live a friendly smiley community-based matriarchy like this? Wake up walk barefoot gravel through old-growth, hate men with greedy saws.

Perhaps not.

"Let's ramble, shall we?"

"Too right. Burning man calls."

The inner-peace ex-hippi guard squats in marooned, post Grapes-Wrath shingle truck, gives us the crossed heart Siornara, as our four WD bites gravel exit road. Yea. Burning Men.

Chaos and craziness. Checkpoint :

Any fruits and vegetables boys?

Lie, we keep our juicy booty.

Tell truth, and boss-man takes the mangos.

A cut-dry shank-o-cloth furls in Agricultural-station breeze. Stars and all.

US of A's God-We Trust… What's in that cooler son? Mind if we have a look?!

Two oz. mum nature is… "plant, or vegetable matter."?

Yessir. Mushrooms for spaghetti.

Where's your red sauce?

Goddamn Epicureans. Against hallucinogens, for wreckilling honest appetites.

We're going to buy it now. With Mini-Series Dramas flashing through skulls.

Buy beer without incident; and U-turn. Salute guards. Slippery black Audi streaks S to S of 299, with its fine-grain photos of orange set sun. Jonathan reading International Black Rock rules and Burning Man regulations proclaimed via internet.

"I don't remember any of those rules last year!"

Complain about 'rules' in general.

"And three people died."

"Three isn't so many!"

Hoyt hard-lines. Tis true as it-tis surprising. Only three?! In all-night gasoline con-explosive ignite by deranged, drug-induced minds? With highly combustible high-powered V-8 imaginations dust roostering divits out back? With all those unlucky lottery numbers, Jack Danieling dinner watching bare-muff goddesses dancing? Three dead defines the acceptable casualty list, considering red neck saltflat speed demons. Anyway, we finally found the place. Smuggle Jonathan in, suffocating under plastic to save fifty bucks. Looks like… a Sci-Fi movie.

Cops are drug nudity cool? Amazing. Mangos, stimulants, illegal you-name-it, and open fornication? Rules, like Time. Hard to say, when nobody cares anymore.

Post apocalyptic coma dripping saliva corner of mouth head bounces 'gainst hot glass at shotgun, too vague to consider driver, any better shape. No sleep, again post-fifteen mile walk weirdness, fires all around. Looking down, like snub-nosing LA from 35,000 at night with feet on ground. Too many stars to master, sky-scanning fungi-warped brain moves body in rave camp. Few with "clothing". Tractor-flamethrower detonates helium balloon in the eyebrow searing million-BTU burst. Image collision, as inside temp sport utility shlepper climbs. Towards normal circumstance, one person plus half of this gear would hardly fit. Try three. Feet raw on the soft acrylic carpet, from untold miles' dry lake bed. Feels like SOS scrubbing through my immoble haze. Almost refreshing, in a shroomful way. Too much weirdness to properly document. Music that's never been heard before. Police that didn't arrest anyone. It is… over? And I am going… to San Francisco now? Munch a dry-dust tongue, and think about drinking. Just checking. It's good to know what's up.

"What was your favorite part?"

"That band. after the man burned."

"Yea. We danced some, huh?"

Understatement-city. That was pre-rave. I could hardly move my neck.

"And the giant ice ball. And when they tried to burn it."

Unbelievable. Days in a scorching heat, and never got smaller. Thing must have weighed ten thousand pounds.

"I'd gone to bed by then, I suppose."

"Daiquiris finished about four."

A huge lumbering machine designed to annihilate the ball, was actually a blender.

"Sorry I missed it."

"I also liked the sex change tent."

"Yea. And that mobile dance living room."

Obviously more amicable than I, chatting to keep safety factor at 65. Hoyt and Jonathan were blazing towards Seattle… Leaving me, to continue sojourn.

Where's your exit

Drop off Wally gwallydotcom at Airport Republic of Reno, stash of dust-choked stuff for red-suit employee, drive round and round. Inane ramblings of woman's soap opera mind. Who's doing what to whom who did what to me isn't that wrong what do you think I don't really want to know. I am in a moronic stance of "perfect" unconditional love. I'm perceptive enough to see the dilemmas, but fool-hearted enough to keep them to myself. I accept her, with all crush velvet train-dragging dirt flaws through impatience-please make me elsewhere, watching geese shit, champing grass. Anything. Realize: I am not doing her, or my certain listener, any favors. Also realize : Universal love should not condition acceptance. Love is letting people grow. License yourself to perception-and not because they need to hear it. You both need to hear it, together.

I deny us mutual evolution. With this silence.

How can I consider myself a friend? I write LOVE at the end of her letter?

I am afraid to love-to do that harder thing-to speak that truth, whatever it may be, instead of resenting somebody, pinning them under the sharp cleat of "unconditional love".

Love, is tellin' dat ole truth.

So I did. Carelessly at first, then… I saw how I was talking about myself!

I told her so. We're in this together-we approach it from slightly different directions but…

Not really.

Stop and heart-to-heart, in Auburn's high ceiling'd moss of artifact nailed walls gold-rush-time saloon. The best talk we'd ever had. She tells me about her brother she loved to death, killed in a car wreck she lived through. Barely. I am overcome with rawness humans can carry around inside them. I am flashing back to hot springs, when a New Yorker wanted to know where the North-Westerners put their anger. "'They're all so damned nice.'" Are you mad at him for leaving you? House mate's sister committed suicide. He's furious she didn't love him or herself enough to stay. No. He had every reason to live. He wanted to live. But aren't you mad he left you alone?

I look in her eyes. She doesn't cry. I do.

She tells me more.

She's tells me about my wife, and her state as I'm in Colorado. Falling apart. Never said anything, but could tell. Giant void. Brock might not be coming back. Too much responsibility. No sleep. People dying of all those things. Anything can happen. Life ring. Matt. Nice person. Won't climb any ladders over anyone. Good soul. Likes her. Respects her. Kept her

from loosing it.

I gain perspective. I see opposites attracted to learn, not sweat small stuff. You must celebrate difference, to assimilate its lessons. Powerful combinations are volatile. They explode.

And explosions can ebb good.

Bartender wants to know about Burning Man.

We tell the story of man who made the chicken wire toilet paper thing bigger than life and stood in front, like Tiemnamen Square dropout, when our death-breathing tractor lumbers up, drips immolation. He fought jelled gas.

"'You gotta let it Go!'"

We yelled/He wouldn't. Why then, had he come to burning man?

I'm torch bearer, holding circle as the man ignites. Face mud swaths crumble with madness, as I thrust my burning waterpipe soldered green bean can, to kerosene black air. The man is me. I am burning. This is change, a ritual people incite, just by coming here. Explosions, pyrotechnics and hay bales are voracious for flame. Humans running for/from the cataclysm of the falling men, and

We are The Man standing in front of our toilet paper creations, arms up high.

¡STOP!~

I tell her she's using marijuana and food to dull her creative edge. I tell her she always creates opportunities to make other people's desires come true, so she won't concentrate on her own. I see own addictions and usuries, saying this. I tell her so. She agrees. I'm so busy! On what though? U-know. The party. Fuck that yearly party. You're doing it because you're expected to.

YUP.

(A hard thing to admit.)

So cancel it.

I can't.

Why not?

I've already invited people.

So?!

She is fully capable of deciding, right then and there, to do what's best for her.

Get out of the way; let false wall burn.

I like people like that.

zaa.

The certain edge I love in a person-ability to be scads of different people, one body. Shift shape through circumstances, while living it fully. Whatever the"circumstance" is. Too bad this trait is somewhat rare on this earth. For most parts, men are afraid to burn in any given instant. Men freak-out examining close-up vulva sex-change innocents. Women are too scared to fondle each other in public, take off shirts and get friggin' dirty. And the shower. And not he shower. We're paranoid fools, unable to feel the dance of life raging around us, protecting something we don't even understand, using flame to navigate. Sun: male energy. Women who go there are strong, my friend shares with me, heading to Bay Bridge. They love to be one of the boys-rat around with them, in that special thing men do. When my brother died… I know my life is poorer now, because I'm only one of the boys sporadically.

she continues.

Lots of women can't believe I like to go out there, bathe in that male energy, get dirty and do what we do. They think it sounds horrible. Too bad for them, I say. I am barely awake, driving her car. Thoughts of lousy drivers pervade. The mad rush of mad rushers repeat the exodus other way around. I condition myself on hairball lane changes; consider tenure of city, country a village, entire world. They're made up of individuals, projecting individuality into amalgamate form. Sign the invisible dotted line. Warfare and chaos sans-quote- the inner religion all us palookas, driving like idiots. The complete world effect, multiplied by masses. We're all responsible for it. Not just the men, the Americans, the Serbs. 69 Chevy gives me a generous six foot margin of error, moving four lanes the hard way, to the exit. Like us checking out. The exit. No anticipation.

Black.

The Dark Madonna in the catholic church. The virtual cult of her Isis, back from the crusades. She represented interior space. Not bad or good; more Shiva in nature. Ever-present. Before and after creation. Whole cathedrals devoted to her enigma. And then, she's white-lighted. Purged. Her vestigial remnant , a wider-time encomiums voidness.

As I think this through, my oldest friend's mother's in surgery, as half her brain is removed. I didn't know it. Maybe not half, but too much.

She wouldn't live much longer, E-mail said.

Hello. Hi.

The warm 24^th Street usuals greet me, with their imperceptible nods of head. The sun's California delicious. I'm happy to be here, ensconced at my brother's house. Nobody knows what to make of it. They have embarrassing silences. Your wife's… not coming? Why not? How long are you staying? As if married blobs can't strike out for some personal growth. God, what a weird culture you live in. But environment promised great things. Is that bad? You know what? I never considered leaving my husband, even at our worst. I overhear. She's still unhappily married. (I can tell.) Marvel that. Why didn't you? You never considered it? Is that healthy? I begin to wonder. It's too scary for you. It is the terrifying prospect. You've grown rather fat, and lost your zest. Who would want you? Fears lurking. Too frightening to uncover stone, weighed to heaving breast. Maybe it's best to process worst-case scenarios. I derive that to motorcycling. I am alive still, after 22 years of riding, because I consider terrible things. I see old man delivery truck teenager whomever lock eyes with me, and pull out immediately in front. I'm ready, when this inevitably happens. The 'inevitable' part, makes my metaphor-stomach churn. Divorce is like death. It's even harder, for some strange reason. I appreciate why people don't do it, or even think about it; but still, you have to. It is mandatory, for considering what somebody means to you. You must to individuate, and enter the loneliness. There lie the quirky, last-resort answers, we look so hard/not so hard for. I talk to my wife half hour on the phone,

appreciate her all the more.

Because we're being ourselves, again.

Our culture. The world is who we are.

Why not express some truth of it?

Instead of the bullshit.

Yea.

I'm laying on the sidewalks gazing at the projects. The sun is nice, and I have a banana. It's not too ripe or green. Misery redolently drifts smooth air. Blackness is bad. Blacks are thieves. Voracious for pigeonholes and blame. Grow up in milieu of this prejudice, its unseen web tangles our newborns with double-stick tape. Psychically, we become what we're preoccupied escaping. We embody what others expect of us. Depressing thoughts. Parents handing down behavior traits, and unseen SNAFUS… My father, apologizes for fucking up… "Don't blame yourself, you got some of this stuff from us." Like a man. Owing up. But I want vision, not scape-goats. I don't care where my 'stuff' came from. It don't want heirloom, to be passed and re-passed. I'm the last car of the "junk" DNA's train. I am through with puffing black smoke. Always making excuses for others weaknesses. Always (therefore) excusing the absences of my own.

But we wanna be perfect.

Why is that?

What hardwire instigates destructive tendency to judgment?

We judge ourselves through other's veins. We judge the things around us… killing opportunity to see their unlinear indefinable "perfection". I'm reminded of my motorcycle's difficulties in Livingston, when I judged it. It is new. It should not have problems! And it did-and it didn't. I had a problem. It told me something, as a body with ulcer would. You can get an ulcer at age ten, which is Far Too Early rationally, for that sort of thing. But you know what? I'm getting stiff on the concrete, and must delay all therefores. The butt is definitely

asleep.

Squirm. Whistle.

Perfection is learning. A body teaches, and you can learn. Body externalizes, to articles around you. Perfection is always, because we define it. In other words…

Each person is a form of language too complicated to ascribe schemes of pigeon home. People are their own unique version of thought, forced through extruder of words, fads, and social graces. Words and actions are blunt instruments. They tell us little of what goes on inside. They dribble what goes in inside us, as we process ourselves with their help.

Necrotic. Inbreeding.

All this spinning rocket power pinwheels, shooting sparks across mind. Will I go back to my dying friend? She's only sixty. That's ripe for history, and young for present time. I was afraid to go back to Seattle, not long ago. Am I now? You can't think of the dangers, or possible outcomes inherent in action. You'd stay in bed! Cacophony! Belligerent ravings, under auspice "figuring things out". What about the dream you had?! The one where motorcycle hit the rock? Bed rock. Sweat. Bolt upright from sleep. You need marriage vows to yourself. Your marriage to yourself is dying. You lack internal bedrock, and roots to adhere to. They have to be inside you, not between you and another. Dialogue means no banana peels to slip on. You can't be given

life's most valuable assets.

Person's gotta discover them for hiss-elf.

Exhausted. Pavement now frying-pan hot.

I hear a gunshot. (Or backfire.)

Pick yourself up. Dust off.

I'm tripping over proverbial step, laughing at others fall immediately before us. We have every opportunity to observe from the comfy Roosevelt Lodge rocking chairs…

But for some reason, we don't.

Fascinating.

The old lady took her smelly shoes off, hunched with lack of calcium, and maneuvered herself to a cigarette stained couch, next to the smells-same junkie, cradling stringless guitar strumming mechanistically. Yeup. Junkie shot in the dirty-floored restroom-Sherlock can tell from coarse coat stains, flung on arm of a nearby chair. I flip the dirge pages of a sophistic book watching emphysema man tremble-finger his knight, while curt-eyed tub gut intellectual taps his steel-band, self-wind watch. Your move. Fried hair girl works the text screen in the corner. Shave-head burn victim leaks puss, reada Guardian paper, sprays slushy sneezes on table next to him. I'm in San Francisco, circuit-board of vibe. Queen falls to rook's penile top. Man shakes his crutch with glee. Two women feeling each other up in far dark corner, running tongues across necks. Makes me wish I was female, for a while. Two r-more men watching/not-watching. Grody! thinks adolescent, too fresh with hetro-sex program school science society imparts. Watches anyway. Gets hard on I can't help noticing, way he covers it up. Funny. Flashback to hot pool, examining women getting in. Goose bumps. Erect nipples. Isn't that for cold? Makes me throw fact out. Goose bumps for threat, like fluffed cat's tail. Cold is threat-potential so is hot so is sex. Rush is threat is goose bumps potential sexual stimulation. I think of hard on, one-sixty mph. Think of goose bumps, soft caress. Loss of personal space. Loss of walls. Intimacy threat to carefully erected facade. Turn-on. Danger. Notion S&M, and violence sex. Threats-all. You gotta love SF. It is the out-closet town. It's where shit goes down. Three motorcyclits, dyked to last pierce-place, walk in swinging black helmets. They love implications, and I wonder which of them,

is more into look than the ride itself.

Rimbaud produced all his poetry between the ages of 15 and 20. Isn't that amazing? He was a fag, like many feeling powerless poetry types of centuries past. He thought his "I is an other" , which is pretty fascinating really. Something is writing this poetry nobody can believe a 15 year old can produce. I can not claim it is I. I believe it is another; I do not believe in this experience I am having. Like, what? He's the brain in a jar the abstract philosophers feared? The one lithe neural omnipotence probe, to update God's scientific insight, as we rat-maze humanoids bump our delusional metagogic way through totally false lives? I mean, it's possible. I'm watching thoughts, listening to romantic concerto-a heated argument between people in a language most of us don't speak. You get its idea, before mind prescribes its meaning. What was he saying? His mind grasps something before a compartmentalization, we condition ourselves to believe, is us? Rimbaud became rough trade, embodying all nasty elements raved against, earlier in life.

He is talking about a part of him he didn't know, but still, was able to express.

That depth we're looking for.

Actually, this book

isn't so bad. It's a colloquy of Surrealism Dada Polysemicism and modern Symbolism. Poems galore. Critique. Whatever. I pin a few loose pieces of paper with it.

Neighbor sees, and tells me a joke.

"How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Donno. Not ever sure what a surrealist is, outside Dali.

"Ahhh…"

"Two!"

No wait, for me to give up.

"I give…"

"ONE TO FIND THE GIRAFFE, AND ONE TO PUT THE CLOCKS IN THE TUB!?"

he isn't quite sure, so yells it, to be surer. Someone I think the girl on the left getting her breast licked, laughs. Pretty fuckin' weird-makes me think melting Dali-esqes, so I chuckle too. Hey buddy. What? Money. Joker needs some. I give him a die-punched slug. Worth two bits. I guess. And my friend is dying. I see Seattle sixteen years-ago housemate walk down street. How odd we recognize each other. Checkmate! Fist bangs table. Junkies slipped down a foot;

old bag lady smells worse.

Dinner.

She wets her eyelids ever so slightly, droning dreamy monologue about dying father.

"I was alone in the room with him, when his breathing got more easy, his tortured gasps slowing down… and I held his hand and said: Thank you dad. Thank you! I'm sorry. And he died. My father. He died." I am full of energy, unable to move. He gave you life, you ran away, all those years incognito, he never rebuffed you, hostility nil, hospital walls sanitized, overly-clean, and you regret it, don't you? Stolen from his last few breaths, is all the cigar smoke, wrathful looks, playful pushed swinging hours leaning fall heart attack slow motion why wasn't I there to catch you dad? Mom tears siblings' shock denial inability to deal. My father is dead, I feel more mortal. There is nothing between me, and death any longer. She is slicing up my heart. I am bleeding, unable to stench the flow. Why isn't she crying? She is baffled by it, herself.

I cross the street, lured by sound. "Three bucks." to get in beer-spiel, checks the ID though obvious he's no Rimbaud in a heyday. Giant mouth dregs dark bitter, something staining bouncer's ground-down teeth. Madness from the speakers. I crouch in dimly lit corner table, watch amiable crowd. Adolph Sax's ghost hovers above stage, crossing woods with brass, creating the brand new instrument. What would Jazz be without him? What would world be, without this Jazz? Saxophone: mouthpiece of unspeakable emotions, but everybody recognizes what's hidden there. Sax moves the body divine melody. Anger malignity tears greed jealousy epitome whatever it is consigned measure, spontaneously without knowledge of where notes actually on the paper forge themselves. Too much. Thinking run overboard.

Stop.

Isolation creates walls in people.

Word "race" = cultural exclusion.

Default: Minority is representative of "minority"

An Immense Pressure to "perform". Where does our pressure dissipate?

Stop!

Does it? Bearded girl in Hawaii. Imagine her struggle!

Hating a groups of "oppressors" a defense mechanism.

A bottleneck. Minorities have connection, through suffering and oppression.

Non-minorities are jealous of them, and unable to mechanistically attain.

Dissolving black-white duality while celebrating difference?

Is that possible? Like being fast and slow together, without sacrificing either's strength.

Christ. Maybe it's better to gibe.

'In the bodies of artists are the answers to our questions.' Do I believe it?

No. There's genetic memory… a deep histrionic hostility of history's despair.

We all have it. Badly.

But…

It's more important to make mistakes going for your dreams, than to be frozen, doing nothing at all. That's what I decide. Make music even if it's bad because "bad" may change based on what you percolate upwards. Bad, may now be good.

I keep returning to the midnight hot spring rhetoric of Brooklandites. Where does all the West Coast anger go? Where does it go in me?

I must have outlets, or else I'd explode.

Sat with that, for a moment.

Throttle. Mountain biking. Exercise in general.

What else. Sobbing's for sadness.

I don't know.

That's scary.

Why don't I know?

When's the last time I boiled over?

Think yourself back.

Lightning cracks fat sizzle up the hill, exploding fire-scarred snag in loud wooded echo. Immediately, by another. BLAMM. Oh-oh. Rain. Dark sheets of it, coming my way. Ominous mountain-high thunderheads, eating my thin-curtain sun. I speed up, slide a 20 hairpin, and nearly kiss the guardrail. Stomach down at my ankles, cowering. One of those road surfaces. Pour utra-fine white rock on thin-spray tar, allow car tires grind in. Which they never do, completely. And what goes in, comes out. Drift white rock snow at shoulders. Wind arranges with new sinister virulence. Basically, can't tell the gravel from the road surface. Add forty to one corner subtract twenty from the next undisclosed another. Use your "force", and sweat the answer, joanzing for Yellowstone, slipping in daemonic back door. I don't want to say the sky is sinister, cuz it's so damned black. I know better now. Don't I? Wanna say it anyway, as old conditioning has a way of overpowering new. Actually, ultra-bright light I more dread, on the conductive wet apparatus as Sky Monster cross-gusts closer. Temperature drops-Substantially. I am in middle on middle of nowhere's road where it's momentarly about to piss, and I'm utterly un-waterproofed. BANG! Corpse of pine cum-toothpicks. No cover. No towns. Don't dare slow down. Junction : Two miles. T. Left. Three gears. Wall of water. Brake. Slick U-ee. Four gears. Clear the edge of the torrent, and continue up the hill.

Ho.

One might assume I had a map, and knew where highway 212 went. (One might.) I saw pavement drowning in vibrating rear view mirrors. What more of a map do you need? The sky's electricity-mad, fat drops smear the bug-sacrificed face shield-Faster. Clear it. Different road surface. Climbing. Fingers… going numb. Don't think about it. You're dry. There's the sun, right in front of you. You're gonna crest this itty-bitty mountain range and pray to sun god bliss. But now it's really cold. And sprinkling. I pause at the log cabin Top o' the world motel ten thousandfucking feet. No way. It is now raining harder. I decide I can make it.

There's the horizon. Almost blue. Warmer over the edge, I'm sure of it.

The edge-smedge.

Road turns west, continues up. Snow. I can make it. Slight question mark gotta stop for just a sec though by the ROAD CLOSES FOR NO REASON AT ALL, OR DURING STORMS sign. For Hypothermia. I tear all shit out try to find those where are they?! plastic bags. In the dirt, (turning to mud) sky cries. Opens up. Full-tilt. Starts with rain, moves to snow. Lightning everywhere. Even cars are afraid. Can barely see in front of me. Zipper on my coat jams. I curse the manufacturer. Ever try to get in a too-tight one piece rubberized plastic rain suit when you're soaking wet? Good luck. All my shit's frozen drenched and I'm screaming at a rain suit. Now I begin screaming at everything, unleash unintelligible radioactive strings of obscenities, for doused rocks should shiver before. I scream myself hoarse, while minivans slowly crawl by, "Poor bastard!"^ing the drowned rat with his muddy stuff strewn about, as wind tore my makeshift ground-cover off, with related gear-havoc results. And one more reason to scream!

I realized my ring was gone.

I guess the hand's so cold, it didn't feel ring snagging on… ? I suppose the hand's so cold, finger fat with blood holding ring on, is… Needless. I am sick with its loss. A Zuni Indian masterpiece of swelling silver and turquoise. Vaporized. I fought stiff hands through standing water, trying to feel it-somewhere. My needle in an ironworks. Had to get out. Snow accumulating. I descend six miles, as snow turns to rain. Wait an hour.

Turn around, to look for it again. The ring I bought for myself, in New Mexico. The one I had to go back three times for, before I laid the money down. I'd never bought jewelry before. Two Ben Franklins: a lot of dough for a "useless" ornament. Don't chicken out. You want it.

This need is not rational. Follow your heart. I lost, some sacred pact with myself.

What part of me needed to flee?

Anger. Pain.

What are our coping mechanisms? We're so busy rushing around nobody bothers us, thus no time to reflect. We help others to have no time to help ourselves, feeling fine about travesty, enjoying do-good back-pats. Bash bullets and pillows, stored-up emotions punch walls, trashing people every conceivable way. We all-out sports, do drugs "He was drunk." excuse the absence for acting out pent-up maneuvers. Even "healthy" anger management, avoids the moments' subtle and unsubtle. I'm mad at the woman who sucked me into her game. Okay, accept it. You're mad. No responsibility in that, so why would I process my rage? How about, I'm mad at myself for making one move after the next into her game that's also my game or I wouldn't have been playing with her. Now I have reason to examine. Anger with myself is harder to live with, thus anger for other is diminished. Easy-out transference, psychiatrists are quick to psychoanalyze. The trick is to realize this in the momentum of anger itself, not later on. I let myself be seduced, against my better judgment. I let the affair escalate into her falling in love. It was my passivity the anger directed itself towards, but I blamed her, shoveling my responsibility to change poor behaviors, on the ill-fated bearer of bad news. The woman. That way, I could be "right". Like People who buy tabloids mad with the Princess Di Sheik death, fleeing rouge paraparazzi. Does it occur to grieving masses they are rather directly responsible, for madness to get star pictures, and hard-earned-money checkout-line shoppers part ways with? We paid paraparazzi, do dirty work for us.

Two hundred miles further on, a prairie dog in the road.

I'm going modest ninety. It ran one way, then the other. Hesitated between.

Didn't want to hit it. The movements, were unpredictable. Varied straight-line trajectories, trying to miss its lack of decision. Closing fasst. The beast ran one way, then the other, till it finally decided, ten feet from tire or less. I barely missing squishing the oversided rodent.

That's me. I decide, and that's what the ring represented.

Always indecisive, right when it counts.

That night, Wife and husband thrilled to see each other-within four minutes, have pulled into patented ruts of behavior. High-centered, we have shut down our idling engines.

"You have no anger-coping mechanisms!"

"Your mechanism if to be a total bitch!"

She walks off; I wake up. Romantic moment destroyed.

Remember this dream. Get up now, so you're still with it.

I close my eyes, to congeal image.

No anger coping skills-and I'd said it-she moved her lips.

I store anger up, unable to release, in any "positive" form.

Depressing. I've done it my whole-damn life, haven't I?

Yes. The dialogue skids into wake. And the good news is:

I must really want to change. Brain jointers spirit call. Emotion-self screaming hoarse to be heard, is mentioned off-hand. I'm dreaming my answers. Answers like, There is no "anger management." There is no angst coping-skill that adjusts for lack of attention. Our fury is a lack of attention. And in instance anger generates…

lie profound answers.

I remembered why I felt so compelled to return. Not being near old habits and patterns, gives you insight to their rut. Being back in them is elegant, for it allows the unique ways programs are enacted to be seen. If you're always absent, you never deal with seeds to be sprouted, or old incarnations, you've packed in a minimalist suitcase, abandoned ship with, and fled. The new destination becomes a different, but recognizable harmonic of the old. Read "destination" as a time space relationship. Get it? You flew across that Montana pass to see dangers-pitfalls and gravel traps others succumb to. Yours is a difficult road, and thus, a voyage to complete.

The light is soft, making features hard to denigrate, with hard-edge witticism.

That stained glass window lecture. The man… Chartres cathedraphile…

screams about car emissions ruining the glass. His plaudits over, he loads the layman attitude, lost in two projectors and sundries, into 12 mpg Guzzler. Belches monoxide with the best of them. Because it's OK to blow gas in America. Nothing's old enough here to worry yourself über. I concede his fantastic lecture. Why, my impatience with other's quirks and foibles? As if I… And of course, I hate my own. I can't even see them. Thus… I hate them. I, xenophobe, my-self. Is other. Or do I hate the many ways I can't be bothered looking? Explosions are low ingredients, nitrates, diesels, and dust. They are not high-born, unless charged with high-tech detonators. The working class of explosives are base, inert ingredients stirred with formulistic intent.

Why am I so impatient with people's quirks and foibles?

Remove question mark.

Next sentence:

Question marks halt thought.

My bottle, in fragile glass ocean.

Halted spirit answers, singe the truth with lies;

signals the dialectic. Cathedrals. (A metonym?) How man communes with heavens. 'Commune'. An old word.

Note shape form substance, fashioned after God.

Not a monument, a gateway. For fears anger concern worry angst lust six other deadly sins flow purse guilt give it to something higher wouldn't that be nice?

Glass can't stifle much pressure.

Not trans-lation-something beyond. Trans-fer.

From trans, or across, and ferry. Note:

River Styx.

Every European town had some ornate cathedral-slash-church.

The cathedral, as its whole, ran far beyond scope of NASA. Symbolism was rife. Old philological structure was re-engineered, re-infused, and transported to site. Cathedrals had three layers, heaven earth and man, represented by directions shapes and colors. There was a trollop a rose a black saint the cardinal points of time-west facing future north faces past cuz no warmth little light and the East sun rise present. How thought out it was! How elegant. How we bashed their innocence. Their ingrate arrogance fell the nardowells.

Perhaps church was a giant forked grounding rod.

I mean, did they level druid goddess etc. sites for semi-accident of

new foundation usurps old cause?

Methinks not.

Depression and anxiety: a bottle, almost ready to break. Use the fragile vessle burst energy for pleasure. Enervation's allusion is nowhere to go. We are maximally constrained, in the course of artifice, we like to follow in life. In other sounds, overcharge batteries, and they explode,

flinging acid everywhere.

I am ogre, harboring resentments for ancient proverbs.

I am lukewarm hot spring; had enough of tepid water, having to drink it by force. Cracked a wisdom tooth on a rock. Chewing rocks?! And how did vessel shatter? Pry mussel shell apart; masticating wildly. You; the crustacean. But that lady, in the tub, naked-Reading the Emotional Intelligence book-that was good! So isolated, in her corner, vying for erudite facts about heart-relating. All those people around her, waiting for connection!

Our salient facility, shows self in the folly of others.

And stress-related symptoms.

Ulcer, hypertension, rashes, heart conditions.

I had no appetite, scratched mysterious dry skin rash, couldn't sleep, skirted panic, answered to a broken heart. I was pictured in medical tests, somewhere.

"Hole opens, pain pours through."

Me and the armada of every-dolt else.

We're testy idiots, reading to giraffes in bathtubs of clocks, waiting for the surrealist to secure our light bulb

that won't drip in the toilet

candle waxes brilliant.

"We are a concerto of peaks and valleys, not the steady tick of a metronome. How can science, and its measure of being apply?" I ask the audience. "We are natural enigmas, fraught with exceptions to rule. We are quantum-phenomena, defying scale. The haecceity of madness we pursue, dissecting thought in search of laws, is evidently lost on our own self-evidence."

I am holding court. My subjects are listening because I withhold the battered green water can.

"Thirsty for knowledge, are you?"

I pour; they drink.

They are classroom, and I am teacher.

Mine is the ruse of education. They are teaching me silence. I am poor student. I recall raising my hand in an agony of knowing some "answer", fully bereft of any listening so busy fearful I'm wrong fearful somebody else will get it first fearful I'll be overlooked play it back forward pleasure listen to myself polish and practice then think out further little thoughts. The process of being engaged in saying something, or simply about to say some innanity; nay-even toying with the idea, misses whatever issues forth between-and what a Shakespearean tragedy that is!

The phenominologist window-dressing profound moments for general digestion.

Observe his hand raise and wave, full of pluck and pride.

Except for fern's got bugs, and African Mask's sending shoots into stereo cabinet.

What is living? Plants have it down. We don't seem to separate thought from event of living. Maybe I'm wrong. But what is living? What is a live-person's thought what does it look like even touch what will it become when we translate to letters' words and so what if that doesn't really work, we still have to try. What is lost in this process of translation? Is it Rimbaud's secret self or Freud's Id? Let's back up.

Poetry is a cutting edge of any language. Is this true? Poetry redefines the borders of what is possible to communicate, with a given set of linguistic tools. Even writing's visual form says things, for style should be a motivated device to relay principles, and emotions. Because poems aren't suppose to be obtuse, obscure, or Hermetic. They are meant to push the reader to a closer realm of truth. Their more-real persona. Closer to abstract reason Rimbaud's "I is an other." seeks to define. This is subtle. You know you're not the you you think from and see. You is more sublime and ephemerally… Gigantic. The space in whole solar systems, or between elementary particles. Like fear. You can't read about fear, to understand, you've got to feel it. What is that feeling, words won't define? Difficult. No book will tell you. Books tend to define symptoms.

And as we know, symptoms are not causes, or things-themselves.

Symptoms are objective rationale, unsuitable to the describe inner workings, or physical transcriptions of a quixotic human oceanic consciousness. It is ludicrous to think we're so simple, we can be reduced to bulleted words. We are unknown to ourselves, as well as others,

and that is Rimbaud's writing.

I've slowed down. But sped up.

I don't have a motorcycle, or racing bike. High speed muddy downhills are leagues and leagues away. No car to get there. No gung-hos to drag me there, on ample ten minute warnings.

Hoyt's E-mail makes sense.

Subject: Slow Down...

Date: Mon 14 1997 13:44:55 -0700

From: Hoyt <hoyt@seanet.com>

Organization: NRT Engineering

To: Brock Foxworthy Hanson <novelink@speakeasy.org>

References: 1

Is it possible that slowing down in one dimension will allow you to

speed up in another?

Annie's sister Suzy wandered by the other day to imbibe me with some

insights. Our physical reality is merely a testing ground for our mind.

Each event is simply the result of a test and our reaction to it

(or lack thereof) is adds to our perceived boundaries.

At your sister's wedding reception:

Man, friend of the family you haven't seen in 4 years, ten years your

elder, asks "what are you up to these days"

Answer A: Oh, I'm bartending and thinking about going back to school

Answer B: I'm trying, every day, to figure out what I'm doing here and

to explore the boundaries of my mind by using my physical surroundings as

a testing ground.

All the man really wants is a clean answer that he can repeat is asked

by somebody else ("Suzy? Yes, she's doing well. She's bartending and

thinking about going back to school"). The more pensive your day to day

life, the more difficult it is to come up with a clean answer. To

follow your bliss is to take the risk of not having a good answer at a

wedding reception. (In the same way abandoning formal religion places

the burden of spiritual fulfillment squarely on your shoulders) The

factual details of your physical reality seem trivial since they are

merely experiments of the mind.

Is freedom the lack of dependence on others for one's happiness?

Ps Went on a biomechanical test ride yesterday with the sensually

vibrating single cylinder Ducati babe, making three pounding pistons in

all--All systems go and ready for a Mazama sojourn on the 26th.

Awaiting your return and promising not to expect you to be

anything in particular.

Hoyt

Being over a month old, I delete.

I never thought about its brakes, until I had to use them.

The rear locked up, and the front didn't work. It worked at first, naturally, then it faded into oblivion. Avowed to absolve myself of that latter, I veer between lanes of traffic, and quick-gibe fate. Nothing like letting up on the brakes, adding distance, to start the back wheel rolling again, re-engender friction, to decrease my stopping distance. Jeeze. I was sliding I was thinking: and this bike has good brakes compared to old motorcycles. Imagine what a rush it would be to ride a Vincent, hauling ass, knowing quick stops were a dream. The speed question again. Foolish me… used to Yamaha six piston twin floating disk aftermarket pad sticky-tyred miracles. I'd borrowed my brother's Nighthawk to spin my Costumed body North, where a Renaissance fayre played for the last time before make-money golf course cookie-cutter house resort bulldozed the medieval buildings, built with love since the sixties. Hopefully I'd still get there. I spotted an emerging green light, courtesy Franklin timing. I would slip writhe right through it.

Very foolish of me.

I felt double-dumb, the crackpot cars having seen me be so stupid with my one and only life. I should have tried some panic stops, before I actualy needed one. I'd be more careful from now on because the frame flexed forks wobbled all over the place wind caught me and my pack it was a hell of a ride. It takes as much concentration to Nighthawk sixty five, as C-note my Yamaha. MORE actually, because the high-miles Nighthawk's so unpredictable. But I arrive.

I meet Pat from burning man, and we attack her portable costume chest.

Burn one.

The vibe was magnificent.

What about deadbeats sans-costumes? I want to know. They disappear. She tells me. You won't even notice them. Which soon came true. They were translucent ghosts. They were not playing the game. I am perceiving them, but I am not. I wonder what makes that happen? I don't want to perceive them. I do this all the time ah-bet. What I don't want to see, I don't. Look how blatant these people are, and your choosing not to see them works perfectly!

This should alarm me.

What about more subtle things I've semi… (un?)consciously decided not to see? Am I this adept at obfuscating truth? People are taking their roles seriously, speaking old English. Peals of laughter strike the ears, for a number of different reasons. Total strangers are kissing each other, draining leather tankards, and having the merry olde time. This is what we're missing in everyday life! Colors and pageantry. Loud audacious clothiers strutting round with broadswords attached. Where's the zest in a city sidewalk? Where's the lust for life?

I walk in next day, limp.

An exorcism next door has brother laid out with knee surgery, riveted.

"They better not be sweepin' them evil mutherfuckers over here!"

He jokes. I smell incense.

"Superstitious?"

Bait. I know he isn't-is.

"Youbetcha!"

He's certain the exorcist plants gouls at the end of his block, then sweeps her way down.

"I hate doors slammin' an' shit."

Like he knows all about it.

"You ever seen a ghost?"

"Sure."

He's got theories. We watch The Seven Samuri, filling in their blanks.

Idle chatter. Credits.

"I went to Twisp. Saw Eric and Kim."

"No kiddin?"

"Yup. Wouldn't kidya. Me and Hoyt shat organic cherries like a cuppl fat ole' possums."

(We're bowin' deep south.)

"How are they?"

"Good. Eric told me some funny stories."

"Yea? Like what?"

People with swollen knees

need to laugh.

I don't know where they are in Idaho; some godfersaken place where survivalists hang out, way up an inaccessible river canyon. I was sunnin by that river-toyin' with the ideer we were way away from everybody, pluckin' a festival of drunken strings on my banjo. Next thing we know, there's a flashlight coming up in a little boat, from ah don't know where, and they have this battered jug of somethin, with a warped n-tired guitar. Mind if we play too? They come ask us gape-jawin' away. This happened about three more times. God if I know what holes they crawled out of, or how they heard us over the racket of that river. Damned scene you ever saw. Was like that movie Deliverance. Anyway, there was a bararound those parts, you got to via amaze of dirt roads, which we visited in a all-night affair where we happened to hear some stories. He one I remember best was about Injun Joe, who showed up on a horse, wearin only a pair a chaps, and two .44s. He wanted a drink and they gave it to him, though he's been barred from the place proper, for causing "disturbance". He shoots his whiskey, and proceeds directly to Nigger Dave's cabin. I swear, it's what they call the man. That place is still back in the fifties! Anyway, he ties Nigger Dave up cuz the aliens are comin, and stands over him, watchin' the roof. Does this for about five hours; says he's trying to protect Dave, for not knowing any better. Shoots a few times, when he thinks he hears em. That boy's way out there! This was after we saw him on a car hood, in a ditch one winter. Bout ten degrees out, and he's layin' there in a T-SHIRT. Leave me alone; I'm meditatin! he yells at us. We told some friend of his who had to go beat him up, to save his life. Goaded that Injun Joe who inherited a million dollars then blew it, into his warm car with a fist, cuz that's mostly how he allowed sense to reach him. That's how he learned, I think. Imagine! You're destitute, you get a million, and in no time, you're destitute again. And then you're dead.

Makes knee surgery sound light-hearted.

Things happen slow there, apparently. Lots happens.

The colorful people are locked up. They are escapees, trying to avoid the rigors of complex, interactive society. They are karmic rebirths of sourdoughs and mountain men, without furs and minerals to isolate from an infinity of solitude, they obsess on. He said he applauded these spirits, twisted as they were, in United States homogenous, must-get-along, PC land.

For better or worse, they are a dying breed.

I am telling my brother this story, listening to the high-pitched whine of a tricked out 600-something feeling 27^th street oats. My blood pressure alters, dilating the windswept veins.

Hot fuel zooms to brain, identifying endorphin with sound. Just the intonation of dangerous engine breaks my sweat. I am slave to adrenaline, and a little-kid awe to speed. I laugh-think I wouldn't dare let child have toys till now, for fear of what he'd do. Loss of control: A form of potential "explosion". Denial of joy. Bottle swells with repression.

That denied-child I

is the me of Rimbaud's other.

A separation from self. What is it? The void. A form of self-denial? Assume it is. Now what? Come back later. "Humans weren't designed for sharing relationships sexually." But of course that's bullshit. By believing, you never test it. Many cultures of much longer duration than our own have practiced sharing. And guess what? They're still here. Theorize : I think people try to bride-groom themselves into a bridge cross respective internal abyss. But bridge is narrow, and swings horribly in any wind. Its fabric is inherently unreliable, so try causeways elsewhere, in sex… skillfully avoiding all moments between tantric falsehood bliss-outs, to concentrate on ever-more orgasm. The default magnetic rite… like drug is meant to tease, to show glimpses of state you must reach on solid, solitary ground. We become attached to quick-fix moments, then externalize them. Externalization, as husbands wives drugs tears teachers material enticement blown forks seals seven flats freezing sweat big broken rock road of endless ups to mythical microwave stations pumped by no-food lactic-acid legs. Whoa. Stay internal to these moments. Take responsibility for your greater-message license. If someone doesn't want to change, they may think you should respect them the way they are. If my wife likes the way she is, me telling her to change means I tell her she's no good. I may be telling her (under currents of reciprocal truth) that I've never liked the way she was. And who needs that?! Who wants to believe the bridge was too faulty to actually… even cross? How apt, my telling myself, almost telling an other.

I is other .

I think, therefore … What a flimsy argument. I answer, without clarity of what I AM is.

I am some energy-ether, some ineffable glue betwixt atoms, quarks, DNA pairs, relationships, stars, and unicorns. I am the tidal force of support we pawn off to gravity, quantum worlds, or equal-opposite action reaction matter-anti matches. Strike for flame; close booklet so theory doesn't cornflagrate … What keeps our system so inexplicably stable? Maybe it isn't. Inside systems always verging on breakdown chaos thermodynamic third rule decay-rebirth. Inside is outside. Outside; is in. A chock-full file of X-force to tap into. Ether has any orientation, with a default switch set to knowledge we have little of. Religion was meant to show us pull chain, but we each have to...

The force that's chaotic, and ordered. It can destroy you, if you let it.

Illumination. Darkness. Mix so they don't need to separate.

I take score of my surroundings-weirdoes are everywhere. Weird shorn uniformity, weighs scale justice. People scrambling for money. Schools galore. Universities, waiting a pirate-student's unconcern to graduate laurels.

I become poetics student.

Among other things.

I am now a working class bar two blocks away, drink Old Foghorn in scratched $3 pints.

Rimbaud papers scattered.

Film crew comes in, before pool-table brawl.

They hesitate at the

unabashed realism.

When the gigantic bouncer waddled-off the scent of

gook blood waiting to spill some

dumb tattoo boy's beer-gut ego,

I wonder how many people do U.C. Berkeley like this?

No way to prove it.

No paper to … up-against-the-wall.

People scream when

the jukebox is broken.

In one point five weeks I'm fried Tin Drum RatTatTat's dance six-point-five hours class a day.

people read about, rather than become. Criticism is no substitute for the smashing wood

of blue collar brawls. It is no conversation with Mr. One Arm Lost junkie gangrene.

In class, homework, work-wash-food-clean-bills. Sleep, and (not enough of that!)

there is no time

for LIFE.

One student poised week 1.7 Critical Analysis Workshop-Teeter, left.

I wrote this for him, handed, before he latched the door

FORMER STUDENT

moved. Sold

all worldly anchors, left

for higher education, lasted

three long weeks. Quit

the routine focus lecture hours

behind desks. Gotta d--k

job.

Lateral. Wink.

More life.

I become a nude drawing model, and

sign X for sex parties coyotes promote. Jazz musicians' C habit

turns to H. I make

my inevitable order. Isn't

San Francisco great?!

"I ain't shootin!"

Sure, you ain't. Curiosity makes Kinda Blue cats, roll their sleeves up.

Get down and dirty. No I ain't. Look, all I'm saying is, I think he protests too loudly.

No time to enjoy the Woe, Shakespearism genders. Gotta pull back on them classes, cuz

LIFE's infection rages.

This feeling of roguish form.

This lost-your-keys? sulking sot with DUMMY light flashing.

They're in the trunk. And I don't have a spare.

Where was I?

Wasn't I

grappling wit-da problem, or

two?

Chalk-mouthed sweater-toothed bad-breathed stomach-trashed imbued on stress. Bartender sunny smile pot-belly charms G-rate camera. Fight-brother asks the other's nightly forgiveness, embarrassed the somebody's watching's eyes are convex lens glass. Embarrassed watching his prime-time ingenuousness? Funny thing: The perpetually living.

Other people, watch TV. See them. Go! Fight!

to work in the morning.

"How come you never answer my calls?"

One dude admits: "I lost my phone.".

Even rednecks laugh (not that there were others to).

The entertainment wears thin. I get a shiver.

What's going on with my wife?

I don't know.

She's working a 14 hours a day six days a week?

Her fault.

Succumb to others.

I call her.

We talk. Like old friends. Like

siblings I can't imagine

not having her. We are

intimately, irrevocably

connected. What

does that Mean?

How come we don't get along?

Marvin Gaye plays. The pool cue splintered in blue

dust fragments is Piccasso still life. I blunder through a sound track,

overcome with causation. The bartender shocks me with another God-Om.

"On the house, student." I was one too, so recently.

Drunk. What? A… Open flip cover surrealism soaking slop.

Stained ILLUMINATIONS' BARBARIAN, with 29 cent ball point Bick.

Jukebox kick-works again.

Adjustments:

Don't forget to force.

A drunkard

bussing pint glasses

to lukewarm dishwasher.

I can barely understand her. She doesn't "care about anything". I read didactic literature, yellow-underlining big, seldom-used words. She watches me with the, middle-age hazel-doe eyes. She works concierge in hotel she won't be bothered remembering. I tell her, it doesn't matter.

"Excuse me."

And the toilet had an old square nail in its bottom. I peed straight at it, marveling. Every flush worked it up, and down. It trilled the ceramic. You could hear its sincere squeak, dragging scratch down porcelain. Whose strange joke is this? Caricatures of white chalk graffiti, ill-fit warped-wood bog cover, hinges tinge rust. Door slams. Her friend with the 40+ muscles, sculpted long. It was mind poetry, the way I approached it. (It. LIFE.) I can barely understand her.

She is telling me, quite dizzily, not to forget to care.

"Are you lonely?"

Strikes a tender cord. "Aren't we all?"

My diversion, front-and-center! She is drunk and then some, spooling radioactive truth. It makes me feel points' dagger, everywhere subtle and not-so.

"Don't forget to take care for yourself."

She's giving sublime upload. She lapis loves wrought-gold setting, not aware she's gazing my ring. "And…" (The part that killed me.) Before I left my brother's house, I tore a page at random from an old book. Quite old. 1880, or so. Binding's shot no sin, reading the first thing I saw-'It is your duty to seek out that one thing and do it with all your might.' Referring to passion of life. And she says to me: You have to find one thing, and do it as if there were nothing else to do." I am speechless. This person is the most improbable master of matters sublimate and acutely spiritual as all cliché might imagine. I gaze at yonder TV, for baseball grounding. Dust-bunnies' screen features # 42, for the longest time, on jersey-back of God knows whom. She is making me, feel complete, in pretext, and falsity. She isn't quite wane of what's happened,

amassing Lite beer from our bizarre interaction.

It is your duty to find that one thing you will do with all your might.

What more terrifying thing is ere?

What roulette gun fired?

I feel I am completely fake, talking falsity intellect learning to mimic my spirit. I am roundabout truth, skirting Z axis-deep issues. I am puppeteer, jerking stings to watch myself sing ugly song, through taut invisible threads. I am paucity, reveling in lack of what I seek. It occurs to me, I've entered a hyperbolic state. I view world eyes given to me,

by a drunk concierge.

I bow, glad to be rid. She returns to her threesome.

New eyes say the one with work-hardened tan-skin muscle looks strong, to fight herself. I picture this clearly. I am attracted to this attribute in women, because I feel it occurance in me. Take care of yourself, echoes? Woman an embodiment of fight, seeks to strengthen her weapons, fueling adventual demise. I watch her birdlike processing-her mind's pigeonholing. The intellect razor-sharp, hones its perspective further. Her mind is scalpel, in hands of a clumsy child. I am getting mock visions. She is diametric opposite to sloppy, aphoristic friend, who doesn't take kindly to thinking; who knows truth anyway. Their third companion is naked to eyes, as worst of either one's weakness.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to read Rimbaud.

I suddenly understand who it was, in him, who I is an-othered him to stop his writing at twenty, and become the bestial things the hostile, irreverent verse condemns. He spoke from the him of I the one he dined with nightly, yet never knew. The pre-DaDA genius was the unconscious, covered with drink and vice. The Barbarian poem foretold "undoing", in the moralistic tone of younger, feeling-tortured days.

A New Zealand native, about three-fifty in that healthy-looking Polynesian tree-trunk sort of way, bellows a wild Chimera animal, snapping me from trance. It is entirely possible every piece of furniture will be reduced to toothpicks in instants. I stay long enough to make it appear I'm not leaving because I'm afraid. Door slow to bang, hand-assisted in its illusion. In Church light, island of silent old streetcars, I shake my head-marvel at the time-place travel, walking thresholds can bring.

Hangover, slightly.

In the sterile confines

of a dingy-walled classroom

I revel in the theories mental tailors submit

picking their threads of reasons

quite apart from

everything that really matters.

I subvert this logos, with heretic's viand

Rimbaud ran away.

And they stare.

"From what?" shocked-eyes appraise.

"He ran towards…"

Same thing.

Who are you?

"…Truth?"

How alien, its recognition.

Are you a formal student?

Simile = using Like… or As…

Last-night's barfly verbatim book-line

times twenty-five!

Who wouldn't run from nonstop synchronicity?

Talk is cheap.

Because teachers and students like…[no real simile] "Rimbaud"

thinking they are running to… something profound.

Adoring unconscious genius.

For poetry is truth

hidden in tasty, I-want metaphor.

Metaphor = no likes, or ases… As in, They Crave what Rimbaud Ran From

because intellectual ignorance doesn't know any better.

I ruminate, sitting in North Beach

with Washington Park Bums

Here. [Telephone pole.]

Dog pissing, elastic leash.

A Poster shouts silent-Ray Bradbury is speaking.

Where? Post-and-something, corner torn.

6:00

It's well past 6:30.

Not too far past.

Speed…I need it now.

Consider the chemical derivative.

I sit on strangers' motorcycles, just to twist-grip.

I run down hills, feel wind to face, race-turn

the slick-railed MUNI trains, vying for… Supremacy-threading needle stop plied cars

dare-draft firetruck.

Am I lacking something profound? Am

I an-'other', circling vulture dead venison "Rimbaud", barrel still driftsmoke? Ray Bradbury signing books Somewhere-Where all pedestrians are tourists, shrug-shouldering query. I use the excuse to

behave recklessly

pump my tires to ninety psi

so roll whines.

I lock-out suspension hydraulic, to tighten cross-town traffic. The steering bearings thrashed by years of neglect, rattle and chatter the bars inches from shiny black limos. I feel my history rock slam wheel hang on! catch each revolution, brakes on full. Hard pads spur mountain bike memory-lane, greasy slope, heart thumping madly.

I'm fucked.

Pull out. Not really fucked, by most standards. "Fucked", World 3 or 2 = Crippled or dead. Anyway, it's moot. Scream down Stockton, echo

scares pedestrians, think

somebodyt-run over, bleeding concrete road.

Post. Weight back, slaming front-rear

skids a little. In my element, realize

bum sourdough bread from Bum hoarding six dry baguettes,

drop crumbs running escalator stairs, continually

appearing.

Ray B. I'll be!

Lectures me twinkle-eyed, for ages. Knows

something I should. Believes in following

that thing you just can't help but

following. Some internal drive. Debunks UFOs Computers and suffering, for Art's sake. Signs fresh Martian's Chronicles, and sends me packing.

Get to work!

Crowned, as crowd gasps. Dismissed.

(What is it about that guy?)

gnawing stale bread as bread naturally waxes pre late 20^th cent preservatives. Stale for birds means not even stale but a challenge. Works cracked molars, fractured by not enough men with saxophones by roundabout hand-crank cablecar chess, or crazies with aluminum cans banging in shopping carts, bewildering foreigners fearing thier gun-knife lives; the big downtown hotels, madmen with two firefighter helmets continually switching them, back, and forth…

That's it. This is it. Go!

Chasing bike messengers Rap hip hop slicing

orange red lights weave cars no see blind

alley prey hold breath breath heart thundering

girl drops hair, gears falls, walkie-talkie demand

but she's flying And We

fly together.

Stop Zeitgeist get-off cable bikes as roaring Duc dual carbon pipe 916 terror shriek hurts

ears revel watch blackleather MC club bad-ass the car

thinks it's… getting that police parking place Gong! You're dreaming buddy.

Metal shirt reverse white lights glare fear sixteen

big tattoo fists silently in pockets. I'm

Waiting for action-reactions. With

helmets lined against walls. Hooks for

regulars. Drink red;

split.

Bartender expects tip, false smile. I

don't tip her. Truth speaks She is angry.

Angry takes my exact change. Angry slaps

the cash register drawer. Angry falsesmiles next

tip-you-baby customer with

More fake bullshit.

More simile.

Add this zero to

Zero.

I want to respect a person, not

the metaphor of what they become.

I want to know the lives of the men and

women who write hisrory's famous words.

Such is Bradbury. Such would have been Burton. Two Bes, in the infinite alphabet of unnamable souls. I wonder. Who am I? One, of… these? An anonymous player, fake smile? A greedy bartender, jacks dollars to beer pulls, slit-opened eyes?

It is preposterous, this analysis. I am a pebble on a beach, washing to sand, waves the force faux intelligentsia, hones itself sharper, and sharper. I look around me, at doughnut bodies, slurping coffee's going up this year Big El Niño draughts. Moslems praying for rain in Java. Brains oilstone on archane multi-syllabolics, picked-part to moles Prousts never alluded to. Fellini didn't want to know what he was doing. Thought impedes magic. "Don't tell me!!" and he meant it. I detract logic, condemning. What, in gods' name, are we doing here?! Learning viscous circle-imparting it to youngsters who'll paddle coming waves of history, with board-school logic. What we seek is zero-point essence, an indescribable axis, be it temporal space, or written belief. We know we can't get there slinking through mud of contact, code and message. We won't find Jung's numinous through phiatic meta-linguist conatives. But we try anyway. Poet George Oppen was shocked into Rimbaud-state, by world war-not litigious insight. He opened up, was electrocuted, then shut back down. All poetry comes from this zero point, budding without raw reference. Not even mother killing herself, was his catharsis for chaos. Note. Poetics, I decide, is psychoanalysis. How many embrace an utter folly in the intellectual semantic : "Master" of arts? Fifty thousand dollars mortgaging future life hoping for the cush college job?

With all the rest of us wanting to breathe-live art, around the world?

There's a reevaluation going on. I feel its slips into small unobservable mistruths

fit to subvert, like puzzle pieces-[true simile]. In deeds, more opportunities to sluff off weight of responsibility, thus incurring

more weight still.

Analyzing the doors and windows our personal "light" flows through,

does not transcend glass.

We tap, noses: flesh deforms,

and flies bzzzz, devoid of visible insights.

We watch ourselves, beaks smashed,

stunned. One more time.

Battered birds

Adding fuels to conflagrations burning

out of conscious-control. I wheedle others, bored, equal conversationalist with banal, unsurprising topics. I facilitate dull inevocative prose, stooping to initiate the lifeless chitchat

of safe-same simulacrums of… rote vernacular rubbish and toys we

pull from our playpens. I am playing with the players pushing the plastic jeeps and yellow simile tugboats cross deep dervish seas. I am the gypsum distance, my white haze… pursuing cluttered careening courses of wanting things, as being too stuck to make them happen.

In numinous moments; seize your day.

Phone rings.

Daydreams awake, shaking off little yip-dog biting my balls. I only wanted to pet it! Nasty tooth-monster! Wife returns call. Strung-out, for overlapping shifts without food to scavenge. I am shook like chain, haunting old castle. She is wired from hour commute, in dangerous brain-death traffic. Hoyt and her have been arguing. She likes to be obstreperous, just to be what sets people, off. Shakespeare's play, after all. Lead actors are rarer and rarer. I'm vibed. She thinks.

On some level, you don't trust that what I'm doing is right for me. I felt the anger on the phone that you don't get to take "fun" classes right now, and a Joy of Movement isn't making me a better person. Who says it isn't? You like the fact I'm sleep-deprived n frazzled, because that's what you are. Thoughts of "snowstorms", no matter how they come about, invoke your picture of me having partying, and "goofing off", rather than nose-to-grindstone school attendance, with its related lifestyle of all reading no intriguing life. As perhaps we're both dimly aware, the over-stimulation of left-cortex intellect, is no good for me. I am (though you may disagree) already too "in my head". I need to reconnect synchronicities' through the neural causeways of mysterious interstitials. That's where the maximumfun is, I assume. I am traveling there, to experience everything that comes my way- and working demolition/construction I nothing more than simile, to what I engender for myself.

Had to write it. All letters are we-to-them, and them is us.

Replace you with I. Make present-tense.

Read on.

Didn't even need to mail it.

Alzeimers patients go through radical personality changes, becoming often, angry and violent. I tell my loved ones I want to jump out of a plane, without a parachute before that happens. From thirty five thousand, or so. Timestops. Wake up fully, before shutting down forever. I make a will, right after thinking about it. How many have declined in just that way? Were they victims of a repression, we have little recognition, if any awareness at all of? Disease = bottled-up emotion? Not how I want to pay piper. Which worries me slightly, as mind sieves more and more details, like people's names places streets jingles newspapers and bullshit extraordinaré. Does so to say don't bother? I dick-around making a perfect distribution of my theoretical assets, reveling a whole hour through. It is good to think about death. Perplex there, so it's not a fact avoided. An old friend from high school drops by, and asks for a sheet of glass. Pulls out a razor blade I know what's next. My brother with the artsy post-nubile nude on the wall, I remove. Pubic hair drugs breathe rolled postcard makes us recount death-defying who-cares? days, and their miraculous ephemeral escapes. And we were nothing. We were safe and sane, compared to Kurt. Mr. live in another paradigm completely, Mr. two-stroke triple 80 mph weaves all the way cross oncoming traffic, Mr. red-lights-shmed lights drive between parked cars and far right lane LSD veer back no license plate helmet, you know. This, his normal life. His everyday. Commute.

"It blew me wide open. I saw somebody who didn't take all this shit we dada so seriously."

"Yea, me too. But I got tired of praying I'd live through another trip, to the grocery store for bread." I notice some thought makes me depressed. Some thought old and tired, invokes heaviness. Some action, the same, though it's simple, and repetitive, its a do million times without thinking twice sorta action. I feel its weight, pulling me down. I remember a tendancy to exhibit these characteristics with wife. Why is that? Where did I learn them, and why do they drain my life-force? I won't remember to look, and that's the entire nutshell-the problem.

Better not ta-think too hard;

better go for a walk.

When the sun sung from fast-moving clouds warming skin scorched, so many times before. I lowered my shades paused felt fondle of concrete underfeet watched young man push his 1956 Schwinn bike home bought for thirty bucks. Lovely Latino legs in fuzzy black high heels click the cigarette-butt cracks, people smiling real smiles running for the bus. I shake plaster dust from unruly hair, fling my boots together, for crisp steam puffs of gypsum. Foir some reason, an old ceramic insulator in my pocket. I break it, and tapped pieces chime. Rinnng! I vow to collect their slender tubes' music, from the annals of walls, behind rough lath strung with fire-prone wire. Sun dims and returns. I am exhausted ; I's warm, in heart and soul. Three hundred pages of reading awaits the no-free hours. Laundry, piled to closet's ceiling, wanes undone.

Depressed thought. Caught it. Thinning, all things I have t-do.

But what that dives to hitting water giant's splash nobody looking… is the lower situation.

The pay-no attention default. I am walking carefully-greased lines, drinking old foghorns, eyes closed, unnoting patters of feet. Its most depressing stasis. But sometimes, stats mechanically gather. I am aware, without being so; energy is hard to hide. I do as it takes to break thy sown-seeds down, let my field return to wildflowers.

Coke = anxiety. Caffeine = stress. Rain = depression.

I mix them in a tall pint glass-gargle liquid swallow bring back up let it out. Exercise-man no more. Too sore to move much, biking demolition nautilus run Twin Peaks bar-dips chin-ups. Avoiding stressful items drugs stimulation phone calls interactions lack of sleep. And why is that? Because indulgence brings up thin-veneer-calm's cacophony. That's why. So I don't have to see feel hear. It. That it thing. Void hole judgment blackness trouble turbulence-imbalance. Nice-smile patrons tapping fingers to Crissy Hine, slightly ringing their near-empty glasses. Three taps dead, one still hissing. I dump my quarters and nickels on the table, count slowly. Ohwell. "I'll stay." wide awake at one, counting lamb-chop sheep. The half-twist ankle throbs, distracting me from things I'd like to take seriously. I am

the black veil.

People love it. An internet health chat with three hundred hits, as sex chats twenty-million. All slavering lurid suck-thin animal pricks and other graphic nonsense. Kama Sutra advises just stay away from the wives of lepers and Kings. But who reads anymore? We download instead. My Secret Life, an anonymous memoir, documents fucking of 1,250 woman by one man in a rather miraculously short period of days. Published during the English late 19^th erotica witch-hunt, all type concerned feared prison. Heaven forbid women should read such truth! Books racey beyond anyone's wildest dreams in back-n-backwards India, where young women aren't considered properly educated till familiar with all 64 positions. This disparity leaves whites in thin air. Right here surrealists like-notion passing through madness, as William's King Lear, reach high on "other side"s ground. A square-head nail is marooned at the bottom of Jack's Taps toilet bowl What is it doing there? Why won't it flush? Everything is pattern response; and you look closely. Men kiss women at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire from subtle looks only. Can you imagine this power?! Makes my mug swill over. And Lincoln Logs' invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son! No mystery, I, hiding in accusation. My impatience. What's in me?! Self-loving-self-hate. The whole sex thing's a mess. Reproduction in general. There's been too many towns with 23 saloons two banks and a couple of barbers, annals will swallow up. Their fat mercantile digests file attics of regional museums, where wary parishioners crinkle-yellow thinkin' 'bout extinction.

"You ever been out there Mabel?"

"Varmints and rustlers, mostly. Burnt the place to the ground when I was a little girl."

eulogy of a dozen boom towns, just nearby. Their extended graveyards of clapboard histories fertilize stony ground. Fertilize… the

Sex of future mishaps, and related mine town booms.

'You gonna be able to put this into words?' he taunts. 'That's life's challenge, isn't it?' said at

Murray Bar's women-women everywhere, and no drops of drink. Gotta play the market, watching trends watch responses. Reading DaDA in Man Ray's erotic nudes, solarized by Icarus-flight. Brim righteous indignation anger for the inequality men survey, convinced the girl goods are out there but Why don't I get any! As San Fran Coyote chapter bad-vibes male hands feeding them, one room over, :I destroy the drawers of the brain" said Tristan, and he didn't mean under-shorts. Did you? Bretón. More. Aragon. Less. I vole self-whip's poor me Male no real sexual power-trope. No yessa and noah. I am purse and pursuer. My wife slept with twenty more pre-marriage men not even trying, than my lousy fifteen ticks on the wall, because… But dada is sex is implies metaphor as everything isms and metaphor I call friend on the phone she says she fought off piranhas all night with her party-sisters dozens of takers countless offers of drinks, as I'm seething. I refused to play the caveman-oogle game, thus ticks are few. Because she, like most women, pouty-eye whatever they want. It is bullshit; I can't help prostrating myself. I'm a religious fanatic atomizing health wealth vigor and scruple. Why? No reason. Lack of it and not. DADA! Why not? Self-loathing.

Pity.

"Pity is a feeling, like diarrhea in relation to disgust, that undermines health."

Reading Tzara, who might not know better than anyone else.

I switch-hit Uncertain Grace through lens of Sebastiwo Salgado. Gado. Dada. Gado-Gado. Hungry, with association-but chiascuro is beyond "authentic" description. Sixty thousand words in silver-gelatin array. I plate. Two plates. Three plates more. Oh-to capture a single moment of this! Coyotes drone on. Equal pay for black strippers. And why not!? More booth time stretching pink vulvas 'gainst glass. More men with their quiet Kleenex, tidying up aim off, imagining the somewhere/one else. To-marrow, center of bone, points you to death. You're hollow, except… that spasmodic instant. We men's one Be Here Now, moment of truth. Yea. I'm mad about it. Who pays the bills for all that spermicide? How moments cunt the state of affairs? How man came, nn-she legged it outta there! Why her money's sitting on the dresser… not, vicer-verses. HA. Men pursue pursuers pursuing invisible dreams. We are dumb monkeys with wooden pegs, cajoling hand-slick superiority. The reasonably attractive girl on crutches is mobbed, for casting loin to tavern table. She flirts with six and sevens; make her selection from an overabundance of roosters. I'm busy reading Tzara, writing notes-sexual 'bout his poemstanza. Is it me, or the universal male consciousness? "Thought is made in the mouth." A true reasonable hump in bell curve. Truer than we'd admit. He likes poets that are 'farts in steam engines'. Odd predilection. Who calls themselves a 'poet'? I mean to say, who isn't one? He write. "We have always made mistakes, but the greatest mistakes are the poems we've written." because we're inclined to ego-father hapless gumboil letters to "meaning". DADA wants to protect our three essential laws of God-namely eating, making love (fucking), and shitting. A daunting task in ontology, in intellectual isms! Dadaism . Got a nasty ring t-it. Meanwhile, the girl with her boyfriend is leaning back ever too slightly for accident. We knowingly touch small electric nipples, several minutes, back to back. The best dada-fodder to sieve the Very logical, from the Somewhat logical. We Einstein a logic from truth. Then dash it all! He's ready to go and she follows. No logic she wants to stay, is afraid to say so, yet she can pouty-stare a million men to her sweet vaginal lips? Men have suppressed women, for fear of their sexual possibilities. Men are jealous. Dada is an antedated precursor of its own new near-exact copy. Some reproductions: wise man Hazrat Khan was dada of his day. Jesus was dada some-other. On so-on. DADA man and neurasthenia duke out for life. The DaDa tat gas truck boy feeling-up fat girls legs-dada soapy-tasting martini-dada's anti-men loose-legs at ritual burnings-da false-utopian all one of a kind faux general cipher-nomena. All predictably, 'other' and predictably dada-I'm dada'd out. New book Man Ray's choice of nice nude bods. Dada: Absurd and dead, but long live it. Omm-man # six hundred million told us suckers : "Gossip is truth." inspiring endless prattle-ons. Blame him! Logic's mute silhouette to anything but it's own shadow. Luck won't have you. Bar heats up as eleven people copse hand-carved mahogany rail. Awaiting sacrament! Fill inequality's-vase here, with your pithy inner-fortitudes. Compare contents, to some well-filled wallet-reactions won't turn-tail to God. No wonder author Tzara thinks he's charming, likable, and delightful.

Strange watering hole, this.

A ironic fake fire under cigarette-smoke Scottish terrier, woofs bard sonics to a hangman's noose, hanging nearby. Its enough is enough does me in, an emotive non-frivolousness drinking me to feisty drink, and facile driving. I poem the back of my had had-not hand.

Two olives are charming

one olive I scharming

no olive is charming.

Dada days its. Charming.

I don't believe DADA.

I'm not suppose to believe it.

DadA is death.

I must believe in death

According to its critics.

Looking to isms and ists?

I'm depressed. I'm going mad. If I don't stay this busy, the void comes to boogy-man me. I crave snow, caffeine and alcohol. Sunshine is a drug. There's no time to wash, or clean piss-off walls. I'm exactly 366 pages behind in school-page each day, plus leap year. You ever try to read 366 pages rock-hard poetry, one sitting? Me either. Not only that, I'm getting older, and the worlds' big place. Images galore, and not even begun seeing.

Volition music; cognitive dissonance I act because I don't know any better? How I plead guilty, realize the relativity of everything, and turn-tale to innocence? I'm free to do what ever I want. I must keep telling myself this. Hitler is haunting my brother and I at yours-truly parent's house, guns and knives SS-men uncovering all the rocks, and it goes on dreamtime for ever. I'm exhausted upon manic waking, Fall out! of bed. Mom calls wants to make sure the protocol's been fulfilled in some polite gesture I don't premise to care about. Too close for comport;

I switch social vice.

In the meantime, fetish. I have them.

What are they? How do you know you don't? "Reality check"/and what might that presume to mean? Vellum. Instant Kant's brain-in-a-jar realization, in late breaking news of quarks? He was obsessed Oh how do I say on what?? I'm certain it is… Shit. I read Breton's Unsilvered Glass automatic writing tour de force to read my soul. Like he channeled me in quantum-phenomenia distance. Notes Underground between lines every margin title page sit down Excuse me!, guy from Mexico City fourteen years Stateside telling me about witch who removed evil spirit from back of his head. See the scar? No absinthe necessary. Enter plastered ex-lawyer friend the smoochy closet spanker joins and shuts up ask question slaps tale 'Nonsense!' feel sorry for him. His friend Alkie the remorseless developer, hacking down all trees San Fran lovely-olds never built again. Tragic. He's a blight on a pleasant soul. Goodbye. Hand-crush shakes. Hunger. Moxie Mission all night español burrito stand cram-jams walks of life. Jukebox wail Spanish pop-ballads, as panhandlers shark outside. Wheel dirty bike lean table nobody cares especially not ESCOBAR, & his jowly-gym force buddy hands on Glock .45 pistols. [#71!] The $2.40 two a.m. tin foil burito extra avo weighs three stomach-sagging pounds! Extra hot sauce hot peppers-mouth scorched No Napkin cayenne tears. The place is full of prostitutes metermaids and steelworkers. One man sports a plastic bazooka with top sliced off-a digeridoo. His looks like an upper-Haight refugee.

Girl's dress is ripped.

Louis Aragon A Wave of Dreams

I have a fetish for people with weird stories. Unfortunately, they need lubrication to get there. Lubing happens with alcohol, and other things. Sex, for one, drugs, and bonding experiences, sometimes. We went to a Moorish bar, directly across from the table where Harlan Ellison was signing his name endlessly with ten thousand dollars of mostly-blue-inked fountains pens. Half a dozen times (maybe more) I've tried to visit this place. Its unearthly establishment is dark on weekend nights, or if open, the surly proprietor waves you away. What is it with this joint? The enigma keeps no regular hours, and appears to maintain secret initiation glances, mere mortals have yet to ascertain. He tries his best not to serve us. All tables are empty, because "The tables are closed". There are vacant bar stools, but they're "Too close to the exit!" A couple rises to leave. We intercept their chairs. A painting in dinge deco gloss, the ceiling in black era-capsule; this place is older than snot. Vis-a-vis bartender, World War Two memorabilia arraigns hooka-pipe mantelpiece. The most cantankerous mixologist I've ever met in my life. Patrons mumble hush tones, sipping strong two-fifty martinis, as he turns seven people away, under a bewildering array of reasons. Fear expunges laud as unwritten law-breaking permeates the room, whose dolor is oppressive. We stay to marvel. This could be the greatest bar ever. If he was nice. Or he cared about making money. At all. This is a private dominion where the buyer's always right was permanently suspended. Patrons cower. Admit it: how much is his fiefdom worth in a society that spits on old folks? He wants to fight Japs again, cuz the next one's happinen' in twenty years he knows that for a fact but sadly he doesn't think he'll be around that long. The barrel-chested tyrant won't point any M-1s in slanty economic land-grab eyes soon. Yea, Marines' training- tough, but he's seventy-pause eighty. Door creeps open, life slinks in. He cards lovely lady late-thirties. So-trying to trick us, eh? thinks it's liquor control, cuz lady's picture ain't quite right. Sorry Maam, sez, pointing way out door. But he's not. Jeeze! We stay long as I can stand it. My heart grumbled with congestion, till black-padded door's swing out-lung pulls of clean cool air. I laugh, somewhat hysterically, piggies all the way home. But that don't last one hour.

San Francisco's till is full, and needs robbing.

Get set, go.

She's six foot rides BMW slash-6 chest is soon to be scarred proudly with Sun Dance, a pain women without labor feel compelled to wear. I decide she's a witch, after a shaman, reborn in techno-white madness craze days. I'm Bukowsking lone palms neon martini hangout, listening as Sunday night bartender teary-eyes her role model's violent death. I'm so speechless, she gives me my drink for free.

"Why don' you ride anymore?"

"Message from God."

"What do you mean?"

Lets us have it-both barrels.

2 am Muni track gap stone sober caught wheel flipped into a very parked car. She dies in boyfriend's arms, crying-Bar so quiet, plants make noise. He was following her, you see. Happened right in front of him.

I'm trying to say anything at all…

She does instead.

I need to sell my bike. It's right outside.

Hates to.

BMW-gal understands.

"She was my hero."

Slash-six gal launches into her Mercedes story, how off-duty cop pulls out looking her in the eyes, creams her. Lies in full awareness of lying, to protect rat-eyed gambit. Asks around. Corruption. Other cops, not present, lie in turn.

"I was destroyed."

She said. Tore all the tendons in my lower back, sailing over a brand new Merc no honest cop could afford. Bastard claimed I ran a red light. Liar! I had nothing; but he was out to funnel me into his graft, and reeking shit. For what reason? He couldn't admit he was wrong. Do you drink alcohol? Those fucking pissant lawyers! Why didn't you just lay it down? As if they know about that! Riders, none of them. Lay it down and die, you mean? Sir? Come on miss, it wasn't that bad, and I'm in a back brace for nothing? And so, you're a lunatic artist fringe dweller with no respect for law normal citizens reside in? Is that true miss? And a drug-using drunkard as well. They led it, without saying such. I'm in so much pain, I can hardly sit there one more minute. I cough, so I won't have to scream. I got emotional, it's true. You'd get emotional too if some idiot almost took your life away, two dozen people say so, and they're still giving ma-assa ticket, for running an imaginary red light! Those ass-watching clansmen! Liars for a no-good bastard of law-abuse. How can they sleep at night? Why do they think being emotional is bad? Sure I was emotional! Does that make me an unstable, psychotic freak? The guy didn't even fess he was a cop! Didn't even get out of his car to fucking help me? He's six-six two-forty with a gun, claims says he feared for his life!? From me? Someone ran off the bus that also ran red lights, to give me a few last-rites. Looked that terrible. How dangerous is…?! Hoo, BMW gal's steamin'. Angry. Forlorn look in pit eyes.

I barely got my pissant settlement. Jesus. Questions unanswered.

An ambulance screech reminds of blood and dismemberment… A Spanish lady coughs. Starts to talk

"I remember that sound too well."

(monologues trance)

"The man had a gran-mal seizure, smoking in bed.

The door was too hot t-touch. They came through with axes, n-sprays of wet-hiss steam.

We lost

everything

we had."

Was he okay?

She looks up

briefly.

I ask myself why I make this happen. Bid Bombay Si-oraras in three hours' infamous minutes

of raw, verbal truth-syrup. Do I make, or let?

Latter, decided.

Dada was done in by its threat of madness. Breton's automatic writing buddies burnt on coffee, absinthe and lack of sleep. The began to dream their waking worlds. What followed was another form of surrealism; and one more infallible, for possessing grains of scientific truth. I was feeding my fetish, sitting in a brunette-hangout, sitting in a Mexican place, watching the clean-cuts dance round rude trysts with their inner beings, at a popular Latin club. Yuppies to be. Or not. In any case, the poetry was bad, and I contemplated leaving, even though the potential for certain gaieties and carnal gratification existed. Two doors down, a central American dive caught my authentic meter's attention, and I walk inside. They decided I needed tequila. Or I did. Who knows what happened. These real-life people wouldn't' let my pocket buy or pass any drinks. And the man to my right happened to be destiny, disguised as a bartender, or Pinkerton detective. He worked fourteen hours a day, happy as a clam.

"Heat is what matters in life, If you can not feed it's needs, yoh not liable to be good farter." he told me. Father. "Educate these people!" He also told me. "Let them feel the sear of seggagion (sic.)" then he shsushed me, before my rapidly compiling agreement poured out, "Listen to this music." Closed his eyes. Help his index finger out. A great gaiety, and heart. So different than eros-lament of modern day popchart. I am one with a notion, my desperation and loneliness drives me from humble abode, for interactions like this. Drives me from safe security of normal marriage, where sessions on couch touching iridescent hair, suffice for pleasant evenings. "My people give without considering. If they have one piece of bread and are hungry, but you have none and are hungrier still, you will receive some portion of theirs." He is showing me this with the work-hardened hands. "It does not seem like much, but that bread is all they have in the world." Like a middle class citizen giving away their car to somebody they don't know, I decide silently. "This is a music of firecrackers at Christmas." And I didn't quite realize he meant that literally.

Through five beers

two ample tumblers of tequila and six cigarettes. I learned about Love in the time of El Salvador. My music wasn't as gay. Your loneliness inside, forces you to meet destiny. Maybe… it isn't such a bad thing, that needs to be filled? "You will win a big award, maybe a Pulblitzer," he tells me. "After you go to Central America, and write a novel." He was just a guy, sitting in a bar. He was a magic guy, along with vivacious, Honduran first-baby-at-fifteen bartender.

Closing, I wander

with old Mission drunks at three-walk instead of spins face-up Salvadorian Tequila minus lime. A twin turbo Stealth idles by me, full of white mans' judgment. Lock buttons, down. These sorts of cars, "safety" is automatic. Turn the key, you're locked in. Climb Dolores, watch straight streets flatten with rows of neat white lights. No fog. God,

this is a great city.

Rah-rahs to:

Now in one year

a book published

and plumbing-

took a lifetime

to weep

a deep

trickle