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i always glance around before i start out from a red light, checking for cross-traffic idiots misjudging the yellow. the car that broadsided the buick wasn't anywhere near the intersection at that point, he was a good half a block away, and there's just no way of knowing who's going to straight run a red light.

god i hate that sound. spun the buick right around, facing oncoming traffic. i jumped out, guy jumped out. guy says, "i'm *so* sorry". i say, "dude, my registration's illegal. they'll tow my car away." he looked briefly confused, i'm guessing it's not quite the reaction he expected. "go." he said. i looked at all the people looking at me. i got in my car. i backed the wrong way down the street, pulled through a parking lot, and ... went to blockbuster to return the wallace and gromit game, but all they did was clean it and now it works.

he hit us doing maybe twenty? destroyed his car. bumper fell off, radiator broke, whole front end mangled. the buick? is a big solid car.

i have to clean my car. this is no ordinary carcleaning there is & has been enough shit in the car that it sits a couple inches lower on its wheels, for months. i've had to dig through it on many occasions. beverages have been spilled. the trunk has leaked. there are ... smells. lifeforms, the kind that smell, are in there somewhere. waiting with something like sinister patience or maybe mindless malevolence it doesn't really make a difference i am ready to confront my unreadiness.

i am ready for christmas (it helps when you're not doing anything for christmas except muttering under your breath & committing random acts of justifiable rudeness i mean fuck christmas) what i am not ready for is friday. i have been waiting for friday for my whole entire life and never been anywhere near ready until very recently, so i'll consider just having a reeking pile of refuse in my car that requires removal prior to friday to be incredible progress. and so will you. there you go.

and friday may or not be a metaphor. it certainly isn't etched in granite at this point or even printed on a plane ticket yet it might even be more of an indeterminate moment chosen randomly by open road things change you know they do they change i love that about things.

cleaning my car may or may not also be a metaphor, although if it is it is a very very fucking literal metaphor.

i'd been meaning to take pictures of the burned out building for months.

i took them sunday finally

yesterday it was gone

what remained smelled strong like fresh lumber, newess released from ruin in demolition like any metaphor meant to ease the violence of loss. also it would be a fine foundation for a potentially very trendy self-help movement, i can see it now: we'll start out by uncovering your blatantly obvious self-deconstructive tendencies by empowering your inner whiner to break out break free & most importantly break stuff yeah yeah fuck stuff up i mean it now. fuckupping: it's the new renewal it's the key to your path toward eventual self-platitudinization. ultimately, you will find yourself out a few grand for seminars books & clever t-shirts. my qualifications as your new guru include a lifetime of experience applying this technique, seriously: you see, i tend to condemn my self whenever i seem to think the damages are irreparable (again). & this exposes of course all the the basic structural weaknesses (again) in the admittedly haphazard archtechture (flawed by my own design, again) but what doesn't kill me (or make me wish it had) generally ignites me inspires me & i try try (again)(!!) (snide note:the implications involved in building the inference that led to the aformentioned condemnation(s) shall go unsaid but not without saying some thing like this sentence, for example. (see:: deliberate semantic nullness, as covered in lesson three, diversionary tactics. additionally, i offer extraneous exclamation points: !!!!!)

of course i digress. of course.

as a direct result of this nonsense & very little else, a number of my selves have been razed in ways you don't even wanna know how the obliterated smithereens of the fragments of the pieces were reduced to their essential elements like this: writing blocking out every thing leaving you &/or me bleak eyed vapor locking over medicating self serving (your choice: immolation or evisceration) & losing everything again & hopefully like this: critical found mass religion revelation given in some febrile hallucinogen taken exactly like this: envision if you will the specifications for the anticipated breathlessly overhyped promised enhanced advanced latest best version of yours truly, & yourself too i mean yeah i said oh fuck yeah. (interjection: a chorus of reverent voices saying oooooh!)

sadly, there was no trace of irony in me anywhere during the lapse i spent imagining how i'd find this improved self/life, risen whole out of particles like the phoenix, shiny with that new car smell. pontiac, right? roger that. yes we had to destroy the vehicle in order to prove we needed a new, something i've been known to do (excuse: i am required to live like a metaphor whenever i can get away with it. additional excuses available, may be highly illegal in most states. if you have to ask you can't afford it. content may settle while you are waiting your turn for the compulsory cavity search.) i am hereby invoking my second & fifth amendment rights, pointedly. speaking of which, i did have one at some point i just misplaced it temporally & when i went after it there was a moment when it was different & a perfect union & then & then it was now again.

anyway i have a point: these types of things (drastic absolute no refunds no exchanges no fucking around & this means you, buckaroo) are bad things about which to discover oneself mistaken. unless of course the unchosen alternative would have been worse.
(snitty little side note:: it annoys me endlessly knowing i will never know whether i was really wrong or merely indulging in a litle good old self-flagellation which i have been known to do, due to the dubious nature of whatever.)
(tangential additional side note: i have been known to move to a strange city in another state based solely on the mythology of the place's name.)
( additional tangential notation of the utmost irrelevance: the story's been told of an unfortunate soul fell asleep one summer day in plain sight in broad daylight blistering all the way to the third degree before he died of his burns <gratuitous digression> i myself took up sunworship during my year there & tanned so brown i could tube the snake river sans sunscreen, drunk, without burning</gratuitous digression> i rose from the ashes of phoenix december seventh nineteen eighty five thanks to a drunken phonecall to my longsuffering parental units, who drove to the burbank airport & prepaid our tickets & waited ten or seven hours & in that time i of course changed my mind but the tickets were paid for anyway they waited while we missed the first flight & caught the second & life began again the moment the wheels left the earth. defy gravity, is my advice. to my self, mostly.

decisions, delusions, revisions, allusions, forgiveness & more than you will ever imagine, my friend. yes.

it was called cartwright's, though i for some reason always thought of it as the falafel hut. they sold hot dogs. & maybe falafel i don't recall but lately i have found my own eager mind sprawled about all seduced & ravaged & in fact frustrated in a most satisfactory manner, far more frequently than i am yet willing to admit.

i flow smooth from sober to warm i am radiant with the feeling burning with it alight aglow & achingly lovely as a result i assure you though you will have to take my words for it there are no witnesses i am alone all alone is all we are.

indirect contradiction exists in the matter of this inadvertently bitten lip but what's a little broken skin between a girl & oblivion? aglow alight aflutter aflame & failing to fall out of love aside from that & this slight taste of blood fine fine awake aware alive oh fuck yeah.

the words which exist because of this are pleasure pure suggesting this exists for the words would a girl fall in impossible love just because the words it leaves her she will treasure forever? what if her only forever is in her own words what if this is enough what if it isn't?

do i write my life or live my words? what if the answer is yes & yes? what if writing them causes in me this trembling sense of something approaching significance which might as a matter of fact exist only within my self all alone is all we are goes hand in hand in this solipsistic existence in which i am to my self beautiful true made of my own language what if this is enough what if it isn't?

i was something to say made of my own language however the waves, formless from the start, have fallen into an unearthly glassy trance flatline flowing from the sensation of russian or something quite similar being spoken into a courtesy phone just over my left shoulder by someone sitting surfing the same internet i'm typing into just over his right shoulder. listening to the soft soft consonance, phrases formed on a tongue that learned entirely different phonemes throughout its formative phases, i am lost in the difference which i confess tickles something somewhere near maybe the base of my skull & could easily easily lull me drowsy into dreams describing things i've never known, tempting tempting i want to relent, to let my lids give in to the gravity the gravity is everything no no that's not right is it? it is the strongest force in the universe yes but it is certainly not everything there are other things, i just can't at the moment remember even one of them.

except i do, i am all about beginnings but each thing has its own such a long boring story explaining it getting this way and the way things change every instant (on the toes, gotta keep on the toes) so basically what we have here now.today is the tequila.oj breakfast with the daughter and the box of pictures on the sunny (ocean viewable) balcony (there will be a gallery for these it will be fun yes) the moving again this time to a futon near the beach (place with the ocean viewable balcony) and the time it takes to take some time and begin again and i wonder if they realize i'm gonna put webcams in the toilets? oh not really. ok maybe. no i'm kidding. of course i am.

stress.related gastroenteritis all weekend.long bloody hell that is but well enough here sunday night walk a mile for a bit of internet interlude grinning most of the walk in this pleasant conspiracy with the night when was the last time you walked wide open to the night? places to go but nowhere to be particularly? yeah.

thank you dr. suzie

i've said it once i'll say it a million times it is supposed to be difficult if you do not encounter serious challenging circumstances that test you to your soul you are doing something wrong life does not get better being easy, it merely leaves you numbed out complacent stagnant struggling to stay awake under the influence of the inertia.

maybe that's what's wrong with me, huh? maybe life is supposed to be easy and the same thing day in day out maybe it is about comfort and moderation in everything except numbness, can't get enough of that? or, here's another question: what's better, to have bested a beast of a difficult situation, or never to have had the difficulty?

now for some people comfort and moderation is the thing, but for others among us it is not. and though we may long for it even pine for it and consider ourselves suffering for the lack of it, our minds have other plans. we can try to defend against those plans, adorn ourselves with the psychic shock absorption the insulation the well-appointed interior the long list of amenities, and do our level best to cruise through it controlled but for us comfort is really not the thing, it looks good it seems like it should feel good but it is never quite right with us down deep, that restless shifting within that vague disquiet that surfaces in the idle silence between heartbeats, a sense of urgency that is all at once impractical and illogical and irresistable. and oh, resistance is costly, though it's intensity that it costs us and that's hard to justify; much easier to take credit for our efforts against surrendering to the messy chaos our dreams suggest to us. logic tells us that messes and chaos and red 1969 z28 convertibles are difficult and stressful and therefore wrong for us, but logic knows naught of intensity. logic tells us intensity is not a need. i beg to differ.

some of us just aren't buick people, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise.

i therefore rescind all my whining about wanting to be normal. fuck normal. i'm a freak. i'm weird. but life is interesting, and i am awake, and i am alive.

i never told the rest of this story, not entirely sure why.

brilliantly dressed punk-goth youngster comes roaring up in a beatup veedub driven by a rather stressed out regular sort of guy; she needs to get to LA. she *has* to get to LA, something about two girls named Crystal and violations of probation and she can't ride the Amtrak train, it's in her conditions due to an unfortunate sort of incident involving standing up for the courage of her angry, twenty year old convictions.

seven twenty, arrived at mountain, parked and spent an angry angry ten minutes berating the innocent cds in my car for not being the ones i wanted them to be; departed the car still in a hell of a huff with an old whining playlist of doom spinning and me too, me too. …we hit the blue fields in the blue sedan we didn't get much further just as the sun was rising in the mist we were all alone we didn't need much more… hit the hill, hill doesn't fuck around tries to kill ya straight off …i'm going to miss you, yes i will, no matter who you are i love you still, oh my life is my conscience, the seeds i sow, i just wanted to let you know… i have to catch my breath at the gate i stand on the edge the very dizzy edge …perfect water, i dream this dream within the warm gulf stream where two blocks of ice melt into my hands like dice and I roll seven on the floor of the sea and I feel the perfect water washing over me… on upward and up and up and the last hundred yards to the top i turn my eyes downward focus on the footfalls one more one more one more …hold on, baby hold on, cause it's closer than you think and you're standing on the brink, hold on baby hold on, there is something on the way your tomorrow's not the same as today… the top the top the top oh yes …a soul in tension that's learning to fly condition grounded but determined to try can't keep my eyes from the circling skies tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, i… leveling out stretching out letting the ocean breeze push the air into my lungs, i head out to the end and the water fountain and the view and if you are high enough this does change the horizon …sun come up, sun go down, hear the feet see the sweat on the ground watch your step, keep your cool though you can't see what's in front of you… beyond the islands the sea changes completely where the continent ends some twenty six miles out, above it a ribbony cloud and i think jet stream? no that's not it but it reminds me of that funny song by kip somebody about fish, where he takes his stingray to the mechanic and the mechanic says looks like you blew a seal and he says leave my personal life out of this …accepting all i've done and said i want to stand and stare again till there's nothing left out, oh it remains in your eyes whatever comes and goes… swinging into the downhill rhythm blissful not so much walking as dancing thinking good cd choice i need this i need to feel and feel and …i couldn't taste it i'm tired and naked i don't know what i'm hungry for i don't know what i want anymore… and i feel that yes that song knows me only too well and i feel …too many hands on my time too many feelings too many things on my mind when i leave i don't know what i'm hoping to find when i leave i don't know what I'm leaving behind… and then i am done with the mountain but no i am nowhere near done …oh you speak to me in riddles and you speak to me in rhymes my body aches to breathe your breath, your words keep me alive, and i would be the one to hold you down, kiss you so hard, i'll take your breath away… and i decide to do palm street crazy steep crazy just down and back quick (ow) crazy street …she said "i'm fine, i'm okay" cover up your trembling hands there's indecision when you know you ain't got nothing left when the good times never stay and the cheap thrills always seem to fade away when will we fall when will we fall down… thirsty thirsty gatorade in the buick i search the shapes of the cars is that mine no the headlights are round mine are ... what are they? oh there she is she's the next car and who cares what lights thirst thirst and drink deep and need more miles, i am nowhere near done …sayin