30 November, 2004
kindred soul

standing three stories above the car park on the wind-chilled balcony, i was jumpstarting my consciousness with my first cigarette and a tall cup of gunpowdery espresso. clarity came slowly, this morning, thanks to hours of violent dreams of heavy consequence... half-remembered scenarios of invasion by unseen assailants of foreign persuasion and motive. two consecutive nights of this kind of nocturnal unrest have left me puffy of eyelids, halting of gait, and a grumpy son-of-a-bitch.
all that was necessary to further blacken the start to this day would be the cold rain that the skies seemed to promise, as thick carpets of parallel clouds darkly unrolled from the southwest.
then what to my wondering ears did manifest?
the silver Honda that had just backed into the haphazardly numbered spaces, windows firmly shut, pulsed with the unmistakable wak-awaka-wak-awaka of seventies soul guitar. the Temps' PapaWasARollingStone.
wherever he laid his cap was his home.
amen, brother.
briefly, i recalled my own father... though it was nearly impossible to grasp a memory of a person i'd only met four times in my life: a brief visit when i was eight, then my own surprise at twenty-five; the intensive care ward for his umpteenth heart attack; then, the funeral home.
still, the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree... though Cambodia and Thailand haven't been among my ports of call. miles upon miles upon miles. minuscule thrills. relationships stretched to snapping.
who was it... JohnnyThunders, who wrote, "you can't wrap your arms around a memory?
before this grey beginning to the day, i'd been chatting with theDiva about her return from the snowy southwest, and studying the stunning photos from nine days in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah. bare-bones landscape, shrouded in clouds or obscured by snow. arches over corrosion.
desolate, but animated with color. empty, but full of geometry. timeless, but frozen in time.
that's what this day feels like.

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