[303] Screed City

[303]

11/01/2024 Friday. Kitchen Microwave. Queens Palace. Ridgewood, New York.

30 years. Aside from feeling ancient and bewildered by my longevity, its funny to think about 30 years ago. I was sitting around most days just trying to get through the day. German class was good. I liked my math class. Horticulture. Aside from that, all junk. Junk teachers, junk society. The cops breathing down my neck. I was about to turn 17. I had just left Wyoming for the first time a couple months earlier, that summer. I went to Frisco, as they call it, with a couple older ladies that were in the business of molesting me. It was great. Fantastic even. The only other place I have ever been to was Montana. A place somehow more backwater than Wyoming. Smaller towns and the people were somehow more awful. But Frisco. Frisco and Sparks and Carson City and Santa Cruz. I saw my first Black person. My first city. Heard my first language that wasn't German or Spanish or English. China Town! Can you believe it? I called my mom and on a pay phone and said, "Mom! Guess what? I am in San Francisco!" I was the same age as G is now. A fucking child. It was mind blowing. When I got back it did not end well with the pedophiles, but I couldn't focus any longer. There was a whole wide world out there. It wasn't Wyoming and its junky teachers and junky society. Nobody could give two shits who I was and I loved it!

The morning of my birthday I went into school. Returned all my books. Only one teacher cared that I was dropping out. Herr T, god rest his soul. He asked me if I was sure that this is what I wanted to do. I told him I was. The rest of them shrugged and I am sure in their mind they thought, Certainly took you long enough to figure out that you were a loser and should give up. That was it. Me and Justin and Clay got a ride to Casper by Brian's cousin, hitchhiked to Cheyenne and waited over night in a diner for Mary the Molester to come pick us up and drive us to Laramie. It was Halloween and she had some drinking to do before she could come get us. Night turned into morning and then into late afternoon. I don't remember why we didn't hitch hike the thirty miles more, but we didn't. Had I understood a few different things I think the logistics of that night and morning and afternoon would have been different, but what can you do? I was 17. I kind of didn't care. It was all so exciting.

Meanwhile, thirty years later, I wake up at five in the morning in room 220 at the Holiday Express at Exit 18 off of I 87 in Glens Falls, New York. I have a juicy breakfast of rabbit pellets and sausage links and a veggie eggwhite omelet and an English muffin with peanut butter. Drive to the shop in Queensbury. Spend an hour with Jimmy packing for a job that nobody knows shit about. Drive to the Lynch School For Intermediate Students and hang a forty foot movie screen that makes a mockery of the word Overkill. Somehow we get done enough so I can catch the 1:22 train to NYC. The Ethan Allen Express. A train that makes a mockery of the word Express. I get to the City. Lug my shit over to Queens, my tools and my practical’s. No, what do they call them? Incidentals? My shit. Brush my teeth. Get back on the train and head right to Dumbo to meet with Jack so we can drink Ticklers and play music for a few hours. I don't know, it was a weird one, but it was kind of perfect 47th birthday. Not a single phone call. Not a single present. I didn't tell anyone at work. I received a bunch of very sweet texts. I had a spirited text exchange with Brother Chuck about how our lives have diverged. He sent me a picture of him with Vertical V and a dead elk. I sent him a picture of waiting for the train at midnight.

[insert elk photo]

[insert train photo]

I don't know. I don't know if it bothers me or invigorates me or is just banal this milestone. I certainly have done the best with what I was given. Artistically. It has been intense and quite a slog, but I feel quite good about my abilities at this point. I really do think these next few months, maybe seven or eight could be quite pivotal. I really do think I can start focusing on how to move forward in a practical and pragmatic way. How to ignore the noise and stop worrying about my day to day life. I have also resigned myself to work. To working. I have to work. It sucks. And by work I do not mean the artistic work, I mean getting up at five in the morning and driving to Saugerties on Monday, working all week and on Friday after working all day, driving home again, having a kind of day off and then spending all of Sunday preparing for another week of work. It is what it is.

BUT!

A funny thing happened to me last weekend. I got back to the City early. Thursday evening. No, night. I remember now, it was a pain in the ass to park because they were doing construction on one of the good parking streets and suddenly 60 more cars needed to find parking so I was shit outta luck as the bridesmaids say. I thought I found a place and was trying to squeak into it when a mom pushing a stroller started yelling at me. She was not there when I started parking. Where she came from, I do not know, but for some reason she decided to push her baby in between where I was parking and where she was going. I rolled down the window and yelled, "You're the one with the baby! What the fuck? I'm just parking here!" Just joking. I didn't want to get killed. I scowl at her though. Who pushes their baby into danger and then gets mad at the danger? Who?!

The squeaker didn't fit, but I did find a spot a few blocks away. I parked. Lugged my victuals, my incidentals, my practical’s to the apartment and turned around and went to my studio to tickle the ivories. The next morning Professor Curly took her car and drove to New Ham. I had every intention of doing absolutely nothing. All day. All night. And then maybe all morning the next day. But life is complicated and Mustache Rob sent me text that read: dont worry the i am working on the jello shots now. I mean, there is nothing more modern than getting reminded about a birthday party that you agreed to go to weeks ago but forgot about while you were preparing to do nothing. But! I have decidedly decided to do more social shit these days. I have to. I can't just sit around screeding all day and night and then wonder why I feel like a goon and I only have one friend that is not Professor Curly. Right? Not to disparage my friends, by the by, as Brother Buck would say, but you know what I mean. All relationships require maintenance. Especially as you get older. Call your mom. [Fuck, I need to call my mom.]

Where was I? Mustache, jello shots, inconvenient parties. Right, fall out. The next day I was determined to do nothing the same way I was determined to do nothing the day before. And I did it. I really did. I got up a few times to eat something, to get water, to check my phone, to go to the bathroom, but for the most part it was a day of rest in the biblical sense. I was prone. Missionary. All day and all night and then all morning the next day. Which, good. Good for me, right? No! It was horrible for me! I don't know what happened. Age, maybe? I assume, but to what degree? I have been working like crazy for weeks now. I honestly can't remember how long. When was that boat thing? August? September? My bank account suggests that I have been working for six straight weeks, but it seems like more. And before you call me a wimpy worm for acting like six straight weeks is a lot, remember that I do a million other things AND when I go to work I have to travel, so it's not like I just get up and eat some fucking oatmeal and send emails all day and have phone calls. I'm on the front line of America, man! I make the trains run on time! Kind of. I make sure your children have a place to watch a movie at school when it is raining outside and they can't use the playground! That half-assed production of Sweeney Todd that your daughter played a scissors in? I make sure those curtains move during intermission!

My point though, and I will wrap this up, I know you have emails to send, or ignore, or maybe a gummy to take, or some porn you have book marked that is increasingly distracting, you're busy, I get it, but my point is that after my long and arduous day of rest my body seized up. My hips went wild like a White girls tits in Florida during Spring Break! LOL. You know, I wonder, what if instead I went to Daytona Beach when I was 16 instead of going to Frisco? You think I would have maybe come home with a different perspective? Does location and proximity to culture alter your perspective or is a reflection of human nature the true motivator? This is a classic argument. I mean, I spent three weeks in Daytona nearly a decade ago and I do not ever want to go back there. I don't know. Maybe I would have stayed in school had the Molesters taken me to Florida.

All week though my body has been recovering. This is a profound development. Bodies age, sure, but one thing me and G have in common is our ability to log around as Professor Curly calls it. Its a family tradition. What now? I get up at dawn on my own, even when I don't have to? Also, why the fuck do I have to get up that early for construction? I ask and ask and ask and plead with people about why the work needs to start so early and they say shit like, "Well, some people have to come from far away," or "Well, some people like to have the afternoon off to get things done," or "Well, some people like to be able to get home to be with their families." Yeah. And? Some people like to do lots of shit. That doesn't mean you get up at five in the fucking morning to do it. Surfers go out when the tide is good. Farmers go out when its light. Hunters get to hunting places before dawn. We work in buildings. Nobody does nothing ever whenever shit isn't getting done! Why the fuck do I need to be a zombie to do this fucking work? What are your hours? They ask. I don't know, 9 to 5. Okay. OR! How about we start at 7am for some dumb reason and then you can't sleep well and your schedule is fucked and you are off kilter from the rest of society and you need to take a nap but you can't because if you do that you won't sleep through the night because YOU HAVE TO GET UP AT FIVE IN THE MORNING SO YOU CAN GO TO WORK FOR NO REASON.

Nobody is doing this because they want to see their family. It is like Daylight Savings Time. It is either dark at night or dark in the morning. PICK ONE! There is no difference! How are your children more safe at night when its dark and somehow more unsafe in the morning when it is dark? When you can't see shit you can't see shit! And farmers? Those fools have had lights since that scumbag Edison electrocuted that elephant.

Anyway. It's been 30 years since I dropped out of high school. The only thing I regret is that society is a bunch of assholes and Daylights Savings Time is idiotic.