Drift

Originally Posted Monday, February 11, 2013

A sunny Sunday.  Woke up feeling O.K. knowing I got away with one the night before.  Coffee and toast and then I walked to the track to run.  Whoa.  No good, that.  I was showing a friend at the factory how I ran the other day exaggerating the old man short step.  My friend said, "All this time you thought old men ran like that because they wanted to?"  Guess I hadn't thought about it until now.  But I did what I could and afterwards I went to the gym.  I looked at the clock and thought, "If I hurry, I can get to the diner before they close."  So I rushed home and showered and got there with fifteen minutes to spare.  But there was no place to park in the lot.  Half of it was taken up by a hippy-dippy flea market.  I got lucky, though, and somebody pulled out just as I reached the far end.  I'd make it, I thought.  I was ready for bacon and eggs. 

You can write the ending.  When I got there, the waitress was outside. 

"We closed early, hun." 

Fuck it.  Fuck it .  Fuck. 

Forget food, I thought, but I hadn't even drunk a glass of water for hours after a night's drunk, a bad run at the track, and a painful workout in the gym.  I'm not bragging.  It's just what I did/do.  You can't tell when you look at me.  It is not that I look like an athlete.  There is something wrong with me, I'm certain, for if anyone else did this, they'd be a champion.  When I complain about getting fat, people tell me I should work out.  And so it goes.  But as I say, I hadn't had food or water and I was feeling hollow and parched, but shitpissfuckcocksuckermotherfucker. . . I was going to the art store.  I wanted to look for boxes. 

I got the idea the other day that I should make some shadow boxes with my Lonesomeville series.  They would look like the Mexican religious shrines with red interiors and sea shells and gold leaf and little crucifixes on the walls.  I would have to learn some woodworking, I know, but for now I thought I'd just buy a box and see how it went first. 

I got a call while I was in the art store, then I got lost in all the paraphernalia of scrap booking that they have, all sorts of tools and twines for bookmaking and studs and metal. . . and then I was looking at the scrap-booking magazines and then I got embarrassed that I was going to become a scrapbooker. . . etc.  Time went on.  There were some other places on my list that I needed to go, but suddenly I was weak in the knees and my head was spinning.  This wasn't fun, I thought, so I decided to go home and eat some left over fried chicken.  

That was a mistake.  Grocery store deli fried chicken that is three days old heated in the microwave may be borderline psychotic.  

I didn't feel so good afterwards.  

I felt, however, the need to work in the studio.  I had things to think about, things to try, things to do. 

But when I got to the studio, I opened the refrigerator and took out what was left of last night's champagne.  Then I lay on the couch with music playing softly and the doors open so that a cool, pleasant breeze blew through the rooms.  And I fell asleep.  

It is good just to be in the studio, I told myself.  I don't spend enough creative time there.  All I do is shoot.  I need to think and work and play.  All this as I drifted in and out, in and out.  And then, choking as I snored on the too-short couch, I got up.  I would do some basic things, I said.  No need to rush.  

Too soon, it was time to go to my mother's house for dinner.  Chicken cacciatore, sort of.  Beer.  And a movie with Adam Sandler called "That's My Boy."  That, my friends, is not a movie to watch with your mother.  Nope.  But we did, and drank beer and laughed.  It was just wrong.  Wicked wrong.  

It is good to see that Vanilla Ice has a new career.  

There may have been a point to this when I started, but it has disappeared for good.  When I got home, a friend I rarely see had left a bottle of good scotch on my doorstep.  What the hell have I to complain about?  

Well. . . you'll see.