Razor burn, purple t-shirt, head like a balloon, vacant in a vacuum of vacuity. Thoughts swirling cinnamon around in there but they are not translating. A mute translator is useless. (As if American English will ever be a universal language. I'll have to learn something else. Be useful and smart and ask the right questions and seek out the right answers.) How many years of school does it take to be good at everything? (Sitting and thinking. I'll take the class that teaches me about what I should do with my life.)
All students teach each other. I have music to teach. I have music to learn.
***
Later that night... Feeling cheated on. Like a pair of eyes on a test at the DMV. The winding lines and stale impatience. No time to leave the queue for a cigarette when a bastard in a bathrobe, downing miniature shots, will replace you.
Cigar for the show. Look nice. Rock out. (Big day my boy my body). Plant a flower watch it grow and pluck flower. Lose it. Something sinister stirs in the closet or under the bedsheets. Monsters of great weight dispersion where the balance is felt in between.
Bring lights and great attitudes. The crowd inside. It will be very hot. Friday the 13th. Something fateful in the way humans react to the day. I will play my heart out. Groove too hard. Get my papers done, be social, too social. Watching the hands of a clock fight gravity then regain solid speed on the downside like a rollercoaster, some shit about kinetic energy.
I think about a girl, of course. I think about how my social interactions were awful today. Tired. Useless. Listen to music. Tune in to the lecture and tune out to the rest of the world. Them and I. Us and them. Who is us? Consciously ignore the flames of a past desire. A past passion, but no one to be ignored and I spasm or shake in a nervous fit when something reminds me. Very little contact with the outside. Counting dollars in the negative. The gutters and spittoons outside of fancy restaurants, looking down shirts from the top floor down. Perk of the job? Well now. Tuesday. Ruby. Bass lesson. Paper beginning. Energy energy energy. Work out. Have the focus and motivation to control the outcome. To feel worth and to drink things that make my heart feel better and the air warmer. Something something. Vitamins and japanese minerals to inject and invade me with a rush of energy and focused conclusion-coming. We will be victorious. I barely know the guys but my distance is due to my departure. Imminent.
I quit denying that I love to play music and coast off of them to make it happen. But here is a culmination. Recording begins again soon. To clicks. Robot metronomes.
Live with producer? production team. reduction team. work out the details for this arrangement. (good idea to give mother his number? can't decide. I felt incredible freedom to make my own decisions and to figure it all out myself.)
Begin research. Apartments. Where to avoid.
Alleyways and cartwheels.
I will miss the weather maybe. The band, the music. But I will be involved with other music for sure. For certain.
_____
Getting laid. Dreaming about rainbow lights and definitive advice from an old man who used to be a genius author before his something or other gave out. (Something always gives out leaving a person slightly crippled, but still a person.) Counting strange flowers and plant I don't understand.
Bats, bobcats. Night birds. The apache plume. Arizona poppy. Blue phacella. Big sagebrush. Brittlebrush. Chia. Chuparosa. Cliffrose. Cave primrose. Datura (poisonous!). All beginning with the word 'desert' : chicory, dandelion, five-spot, globemallow, lily, lupine, mariposa lily, marigold, paintbrush, pincushion, sunflower. Dogbane (poison!). Devil's claw. Dune evening primrose. Fairy duster. Filaree storksbill. Ghost flower. Mojave aster. Popcorn flower. Prickly poppies. Sand verbena. Showy four o'clock. spanish needles. western wallflower. woolly daisy. yellow beeplant. barrel cactus. beavertail cactus. chain fruit cholla. cholla cactus. claret cup cactus. desert christmas. datil yucca. fishhook. hedgehog. joshua tree. mojave yucca. night-blooming cereus. organ pipe cactus. century plant. prickly pear. saguaro. soaptree yucca. black widow spiders. cicadas. dragonflies. fire ant. praying mantis. scorpions, sphinx moth. stinkbugs. tarantula. tarantula hawks. western tiger swallowtail. admiral. viceroy butterfly. velvet ants. bastard toadflax. crucifixion thorn. california fan palm. cocklebur. cottonwood. creosote bush. desert willow. elephant tree. greasewood. mornom tea. ocotillo. mesquites. palo verde tree. four-wing saltbush. four-winds. showy milkweed. smoke tree. stinging neetles. tumbleweed. winterfat.
