Lying prone in a hospital room on a narrow table and waiting to be fed into a CAT scan it catches me by surprise how I might feel if things weren't already so confused. Like each time you turn around what you witness blows you off and turns into a gift of sorts without you ever bothering to mess with it. There's a machine about to pass over and pass through you. A nuclear material about to be shot into your veins so that you light up like a flush on a cheap on-line gambling machine. Can't science make all this stuff enjoyable? Then as your stuck in a windowless room and feeling a bit small beneath the machine and a bit lost with technicians hovering about doing small talk and all you want is quiet and to get through the tent like pressure and arrive soundly back on the other side shouldn't there be something like a preliminary drug? Maybe I'm too fussy. But I do not care for windowless rooms. I care even less for being fed into a machine. Like the song said: is it asking too much? Not only send me someone to love but how about space around my head! Even going to the movies I creep out unless the exit sign is burning. Why not stuff a little narcotic into the nuclear crap and go away for a time... and before you know it what was present and was fucking you up... is now gone and past... and what does the machine care for... the more chances there are the more unpredictable the outcome...
Anyway. Took matters into my own hands. Isn't that the heroic way? Usually I'm a city squirrel hanging onto a branch in the wind. But hey John Ford never made a western about my character...
And like I said everything is a gift anyway. And it's a straw man argument to say maybe it was bigger than expected and try to own up to anyone who said it was not... but what's all said and done and sometimes your life doesn't turn out to be so heavy at times...
Like being in the machine. Like closing your eyes. A subterranean flat in the house of your head.
Fire jumped in January and sparks cut into the night air, flying like old birds brought to life off the heaps of burning Christmas trees. Who doesn't like a good fire? Adults with a keg of beer. Little kids running around with glowing sticks like little torches. First it rained then it snowed then sleet. Then it snowed. Then it rained. Over and over again it seemed... and what it brought up was this.. a kind of absolute feeling outdoors... getting soaked... ancient contact lines... the fire was so bright and clear as to be a daylight chasing the night beyond the camp and into what was unknown out beyond in the dark.
Old Christmas trees lined in rows like Druids. One after another a silent march into the fire. Sacrifice. Or call it a different festival. Music streamed into a tented shelter, back along a wire from a computer indoors.
The kids especially... diving headlong into snowbanks... yowling with their red glowing branches... building a memory system where they will learn to live upon later...
Rain falling. Then snow.
Everyone in nylon hoods and smart clothes against the weather, the 21st Century version of animal skins. Maybe even some hoods were presents in the holiday spirit and as such once stood underneath the Christmas trees now burning. Pagans with cups of Switchback. The Dead. Some blues. Sparks caught upward in a web work of snowy tree branches overhead. The kids attack some dad and suddenly he's got live youngsters hanging on his limbs like ornaments. Mystery and meaning. Darkness and safety. Another way good burrito...
Must you attack? What does it mean to - get over your fears?
Just another pass sir the technician said.
But I said I don't have the personality for sir.
Driving home - the road was a mess - unplowed - wet snow forced everywhere making tire ruts and slick traffic and blinding the windshield - suddenly there was a huge flash turning out the night sky - like a silver wave about to crush everything below. What was that? First thought was alien abduction. Followed by a nuclear blast in second place. In the beer ruins of the night coming in third was a frightened gratitude for clouds and backlit illumination and the small place you have on earth.
The technician pulled the IV from my veins.
A thunderstorm inside the snowstorm.
It's like you can plan on traveling a lot but get nowhere special.
