i woke in despair. my alarm clock announced another day. another very like the last. in that restaurant. with those people. that smell. that lighting. i stayed in bed. for days. the telephone rang. i hid under my blankets. i smoked cigarettes and listened to the radio. i rested my tired head and tried to dream away my dread.
a week later i go into that place. "where the hell have you been?"
"i can't come in here anymore. where's my check?"
i used to live. now i just die.
the summer after i graduated college I sanded floors for a housing project and memorized a stack of GRE words. after work each day i went to the library and researched graduate school programs, in philosophy, in history, in american culture, in journalism. i read about the law. i read about publishing. i borrowed a book on news-writing and wrote a few record reviews and news articles for the university newspaper. i sat on my porch and looked at the stars and decided that life was meaningless. i played guitar and read books by charles buckowski and john steinbeck and christopher morely and smoked marijuana in the middle of the night as i made lists of all the places i'd like to see. all the the places i'd like to go.
the summer ended and i drove to boulder, colorado. i stayed in a campus motel and walked the town in an intense summer heat. i looked at waterfalls and streams and rocks and moved into a friend's room where i slept at the foot of her sleeping bag in my own after drinking a dozen microbrews stolen from empty tables. i dragged myself across a parking lot and lay on a curb. the mountains were mystical. the sky was eternal blue. i was ready for anything. i packed boxes for a native american publishing company. i hiked through the foothills and dangled on the highest peaks of the flatirons. houses were small and cars were small and people were smaller, people who jogged and biked and walked their dogs and read books beside boulder creek and juggled and played drums and sold jewelry and begged and screamed and cried barefoot. i moved into a co-op and met strippers and heroine addicts and hippies and astrophysicists and painters and ivy-league drop-outs and wanderers and freaks from east to west. one of the guys who lived in the basement worked in a factory and practiced martial arts with long, sharp knifes. the other guy who lived in the basement was a seventeen-year-old homosexual who had frequent visits from drug dealers and graduate students. there was a writer with a broken heart, a folk musician, and a tribe of travelling music fans. loners. losers. drunks. drug abusers. dave took lsd like some people take aspirin and read chess books and worked incessantly on a philosophy paper. cherry drank whiskey with a blues band and never paid rent. high-school dropouts multiplied in her room. one of them jumped through a window. taggers. hikers. stragglers. i got a job as a cashier at a gas station and played my guitar and sang to the cash register and sold car washes and ate pizza and made telephone calls. i would return to my bedroom each night to find loud music and loud talking and marijuana and wine in a circle where i told stories about my first sexual experiences and my childhood and my hometown and my college and my friends and my lovers and my relatives and my dreams. i hiked and played my guitar and played chess and watched movies and read books. one halloween someone gave me a small piece of paper in a bag. i walked into the mountains and began to tell the difference between the forest and the trees. the landscape was cartoon-like, and, when i returned home, i searched in a dark attic for paint and covered a sheet with red. i cut a hole in the sheet and walked into the creature-filled night. people became other people, and people began touching people, and biting people, and there was a child singing, on the radio -- the most peaceful voice i've ever heard. i played my guitar and sang at the penny lane cafe before dozens of people. i painted nearly every inch of my bedroom walls. i rollerbladed down mountain roads and climbed steep, deadly cliffs. i ate oatmeal cream pies and coca-cola for breakfast. i got my bread from a dumpster.
can you hear the music?
i woke in despair. my alarm clock announced another day. another very like the last. in that restaurant. with those people. that smell. that lighting. i stayed in bed. for days. the telephone rang. i hid under my blankets. i smoked cigarettes and listened to the radio. i rested my tired head and tried to dream away my dread.
a week later i go into that place. "where the hell have you been?"
"i can't come in here anymore. where's my check?"
i used to live. now i just die.
the summer after i graduated college I sanded floors for a housing project and memorized a stack of GRE words. after work each day i went to the library and researched graduate school programs, in philosophy, in history, in american culture, in journalism. i read about the law. i read about publishing. i borrowed a book on news-writing and wrote a few record reviews and news articles for the university newspaper. i sat on my porch and looked at the stars and decided that life was meaningless. i played guitar and read books by charles buckowski and john steinbeck and christopher morely and smoked marijuana in the middle of the night as i made lists of all the places i'd like to see. all the the places i'd like to go.
the summer ended and i drove to boulder, colorado. i stayed in a campus motel and walked the town in an intense summer heat. i looked at waterfalls and streams and rocks and moved into a friend's room where i slept at the foot of her sleeping bag in my own after drinking a dozen microbrews stolen from empty tables. i dragged myself across a parking lot and lay on a curb. the mountains were mystical. the sky was eternal blue. i was ready for anything. i packed boxes for a native american publishing company. i hiked through the foothills and dangled on the highest peaks of the flatirons. houses were small and cars were small and people were smaller, people who jogged and biked and walked their dogs and read books beside boulder creek and juggled and played drums and sold jewelry and begged and screamed and cried barefoot. i moved into a co-op and met strippers and heroine addicts and hippies and astrophysicists and painters and ivy-league drop-outs and wanderers and freaks from east to west. one of the guys who lived in the basement worked in a factory and practiced martial arts with long, sharp knifes. the other guy who lived in the basement was a seventeen-year-old homosexual who had frequent visits from drug dealers and graduate students. there was a writer with a broken heart, a folk musician, and a tribe of travelling music fans. loners. losers. drunks. drug abusers. dave took lsd like some people take aspirin and read chess books and worked incessantly on a philosophy paper. cherry drank whiskey with a blues band and never paid rent. high-school dropouts multiplied in her room. one of them jumped through a window. taggers. hikers. stragglers. i got a job as a cashier at a gas station and played my guitar and sang to the cash register and sold car washes and ate pizza and made telephone calls. i would return to my bedroom each night to find loud music and loud talking and marijuana and wine in a circle where i told stories about my first sexual experiences and my childhood and my hometown and my college and my friends and my lovers and my relatives and my dreams. i hiked and played my guitar and played chess and watched movies and read books. one halloween someone gave me a small piece of paper in a bag. i walked into the mountains and began to tell the difference between the forest and the trees. the landscape was cartoon-like, and, when i returned home, i searched in a dark attic for paint and covered a sheet with red. i cut a hole in the sheet and walked into the creature-filled night. people became other people, and people began touching people, and biting people, and there was a child singing, on the radio -- the most peaceful voice i've ever heard. i played my guitar and sang at the penny lane cafe before dozens of people. i painted nearly every inch of my bedroom walls. i rollerbladed down mountain roads and climbed steep, deadly cliffs. i ate oatmeal cream pies and coca-cola for breakfast. i got my bread from a dumpster.