[279] Screed City
[279]
02/26/2024 Monday. Coffee Table on Top of a Desk. Home Too Suites. Room 212. Charlotte, North Carolina.
I don't know, I don't, this work we do, sometimes it causes some real issues in the place where the soul lives. It reminds me of years and years ago when everyone was much younger and me and Brother Luke were living in Laramie, Wyoming trying to go to college. We loved spicy food, still do, like I rarely eat anything that I wish was less spicy. I go through a bottle of habanero hot sauce about once a week. Sometimes two. Brother Luke is the same. Why? I don't know. It wasn't because of what we ate growing up, I know that. Deep fried elk steaks and over-cooked spaghetti is not spicy. There was that one time we added too much black pepper to the chicken soup, but that doesn't count either. Our father's favorite snack was butter on Saltine crackers. Pegleg was on a bacon diet for about 10 of those years. Microwaved bacon. I don't think I even knew that jalapenos could be eaten fresh until I was living on my own. By living on my own, I mean sharing a room with two other adult men that were not my brothers in a town that was not my home town. But by the time me and Brother Luke were living in Laramie together we had acquired a taste for the hot stuff. And not just co-eds, if you know what I mean. But back then I remember our friend Mike St Clair was eating lunch with us somewhere, maybe it was breakfast, but after watching me and Brother Luke douse our lunch or breakfast in hot sauce he asked, "Why do Truman’s always need to make eating a painful experience?"
I think about that a lot. Not why we need to make eating a painful experience, but the question of why make anything a painful experience? Why is anything more painful than it needs to be? Not the hot sauce, I can explain the hot sauce or spicy food, it's quite simple, eating is an experience in general, not just slathering Saltines in warm butter while looking at hunting maps. The brain and the tongue and the body all have different experiences when spicy things get involved, and sure, it is not for everyone, but for me and Brother Luke, and Brother Buck it has meaning, not as much for Brother Charley or Brother Jade, but they too, both like it zesty. I mean, sometimes I will eat something just because it is too spicy to eat and I don't know, it feels healthy also. Like it kickstarts something inside.
But to go back to that question, "Why is anything more painful than it needs to be?" And of course I think of work. Of job sites. Of my life in general. And too, other peoples lives in general. Like today, okay, it is pretty funny. We got into CLiT around 5p yesterday. Scott and the Publisher and Grit had to get on the road at 6a to get over to Lebanon, New Ham, I think, so he could catch the bus that took him to Boston and then fly to LaGuardia and then switch planes to fly to CLiT. 12 hours of travel just to get to work. For me, I called the car service at 11:30a and asked them if the could send at car at 12:30p, the lady got irritated with me and told me they don't do same day reservations and I should call back at noon. I called back at noon and took a car for 20 minutes to the airport and then had so much time to kill that I felt like a dupe. Meanwhile, Scott is lugging two huge military grade plastic tool boxes, his personal bag of things and his back pack from Vermont to New Ham to Boston to New York to Charlotte. Although, it is possible that the Publisher and Grit were not involved with the early morning drive, now that I think of it, I didn't ask if he had to get a ride to the bus station or not, but also Vermont in February and having kids and et cetera, et al.
My point is that my travel was quite easy and his was very hard. And my point is not that he chose to make his life hard and I chose to make my life easy. I am saying there was quite a disparity in our travels. And also, normally, I would have done something stupid, like taken the train to the airport, or the two busses I know will get me there, or even have driven Junior Mint and then parked in one of the lots a hundred miles from the airport and regretted it dearly on Friday night when I get back because there is no telling how the shuttles work. There just isn't. There is nobody to call that will give you honest information. It is all, 'Sure, sure, there is a shuttle, yes, all hours.' I don't believe it for a second. I'll end up taking a cab to my car anyway and it will cost me $40 dollars and then I will have to drive home and find parking after working a 60 hour week and have to lug my tools and my essentials eight blocks just to save $20.
And if you want solutions to both of these problems I have them. You can email me at: abolishturnstiles@gmail.com. Okay, don't do that yet. I need to set it up first, hold on. [meanwhile] Okay! I did it! Send any inquiry about how to solve issues about getting to the airport in Vermont or Brooklyn or any place, really in the continental US or even the world, it is all pretty much the same. Regulate the airplane industry and more trains, especially in cities like Brooklyn.
Alright! So where was I? We got to CLiT, that was good, and I was early, that was nice, Scott showed up early too, but his bags, like always, were too thick and heavy for the conveyor belt. Soon we thought something was wrong. Soon there was other factors that led to us soon going from this place to that and then coming back around to the original place. Normal plane things. Travel things. Like being on tour, but instead of it being fun it's grueling and every second is counted like pulling cactus needles out of your butt cheeks. Cactus needles? Spikes? Shards? Stabbos? Like pulling stabbos out of your butt cheeks?
And then there was a bad elevator and decent experience with the rental car and a good drive at dusk and a nice guy at the hotel desk and soon we were sitting at this barbeque place down the way that we walked to because the hotel is in some sort of mini-mall and North Carolina is weird. And soon we were eating decent food that was cheap, oddly cheap, and before long it was time to hit the sack. I mean, I stayed up until 10p because I have this new writing idea that is about these thirsty monks that do a mutiny while searching for the lost city of Jesuit because all they have to eat and drink is salt pork and beer, but when 5a came I woke up before my alarm went off mostly because my stupid brain must count seconds when I am sleeping. I am like a beer-fueled sex rocket Good Will Hunting. Or not. I did drink a couple beers yesterday and I must have counted something like seconds in my sleep because I was not exhausted when I woke up, but there was no sex. Professor Curly is out in LA, or not, actually, she is coming back from LA right now, I think, that flight takes forever. I mean, we can't hump if she is there and I am here, but I suppose I can still be a beer fueled sex rocket, right? I mean, the Good Will Hunting thing is kind of a bust because Matt Damon is kind of douche these days, go figure, why can't anything gold stay? And ironically, Ben Affleck is the good one now? And J-Lo? J-Lo! Jenny from the block?!! Jersey Girl??? I really did not see that coming. And now there is a third Culkin with long hair?
I did have a point. It was a funny point even. Ironic even. I mean, ignore my pop culture shit. I think it is funny because it is stupid, but it is irrelevant, my point was about work, like why does work have to be harder than it needs to be, like why do we suffer just for the sake of suffering? Why does eating have to be a painful experience? Mike wants to know. I don't know. I have a lot of ideas. I am still fleshing them out. Today we drove to the work site before 7a, with the idea that it would take us 15 minutes to get there. When we got there there was a huge line of cars dropping off kids because the job is a high school and apparently Charlotte doesn't believe in busses only traffic. But listen! It turns out we were at the wrong school and so we had to drive exactly back to the hotel where the new school is being built! Like I can see the job site from my hotel room! FROM MY HOTEL ROOM.
[insert job site hotel room photo]
I don't know if that means shit is easy or what, but it is pretty fucked up. I don't want to see the work site from my hotel room. I'm not Napoleon or whatever. I actually have to go and do the work and the work sucks. It is no bueno, man!
[insert Eat It by Weird Al]