2002:

[ october : ¤ : november : ¤ : december ]

2003:

[ january : ¤ : february : ¤ : march : ¤ : april : ¤ : may : ¤ : june : ¤ : july : ¤ : august : ¤ : september : ¤ : october : ¤ : november : ¤ : december ]

2004:

[ january : ¤ : february : ¤ : march : ¤ : april : ¤ : may : ¤ : june : ¤ : july : ¤ : august : ¤ : september : ¤ : october : ¤ : november ]

6:06pm (IAH) :: This sort of vicious holiday has come to a rainy, climatic conclusion and I'm left tired and dry-mouthed. There's no sympathy in these situations. While driving back to The Woodlands at 6am on early Thursday morning, I heard a "Thanksgiving wishes" type bit on the radio. One guy said "I'll say what everyone thinks but no one will say: you spend that time with your family, the people that annoy you, get your fill of food and get out of there." That's sort of it, but it's difficult to deny connections and the inherent desire to be around those we have blood relationships with. You need to lose yourself at this point. Lose the need to be someone else, or many different people, and just be your genuine, cynnical, convoluted self, anxious to drink, drive and piss out of the window. What a bust though, although I think that I could have predicted that in the beginning. Tucson wouldn't have been fun, I suppose. But maybe I could have gone to Yuma or Flagstaff or some desolate mountain. If you can't get out of America, at least get out of American culture, right? The people who make you feel obligated to get on that plane and surround yourself with people you never see in the first place. Who needs the first place?
1 in 6 seniors have HIV. I know none...I think. CNN tends to blow this stuff out of proportion anyway. But what's the concern of proportions. There's an old woman in front of me right now, walking around in sweat pants pulled up way too high. Does she have HIV? I doubt it. Even if she did, who cares? I mean, if you're pushing 70, how much longer will you live anyway? Most natural causes will kill you either at or around 80, so there's not really a reason to expect much more than that.
It's now about 6:16 MST. The flight boards at 6:30, in theory. I love the nightlife.

3:09pm (Sky Harbor) :: Darkness can hover but it can't necessarily descend into the nether-reaches of reality. It's like the old Exorcist or Dracula movies and crosses. There's this consistent theme of pure, black evil being so strong except in the blistering light of absolute good. But the darkness has several shades, and it's impossible to determine which of those shades the darkness really is when it sets itself upon you.
So what the fuck am I talking about? I'm so tired. That drive through the rain unsettled me a little. I always have problems with people who I pass, and while I'm passing them, they speed up to match me and force me to go faster. I don't know the logic behind this, but I'm sure that it's sound in their own minds. Nothing overly exceptional occurred though, and that's good. I do wish that I could have enjoyed a little more music. I started Calexico at Orange Grove and it finished near the 202. I'd say that's pretty good time, but I always seem to make good time on the way here and not on the way back. For the return trip, I plan to either head east to Superior to see the Russ Meyer (or whatever) Arboretum or head south towards Maricopa, cross I=8 and into Papago lands. There's a small, paved road that runs from I-8 to Highway 86 and I would like to check it out, especially that late at night. But this is far in the future. Right now I can only type my dribble and sit enjoying the last of my $6.50 Sam Adams beer buzz. One is just not enough. I plan on drinking quite a bit on this trip, but I just don't know if I'll be able to take it at all. "Work Hard... Fly Right..." Why do you need the dots? It's a correct statement, so just a period would do. End the sentence hard and right.
The Phoenix airport has a pretty decent smell to it, sort of like disinfectant and roasting chicken. It's not offensive in the least, but is rather soothing. Maybe that's why I'm so damn tired. All of this chicken smell.
After years of being on vacation, the metal detectors at the airport have again decided to buzz my poor leg. It happened in NYC (the last time I flew), and it happened today. How disappointing, right? I suppose that I was due for some trouble, and found it quite easily. I am lucky though in that I got here pretty early and got a seat next to a wall socket. This, of course, means that I'll be able to fuck around on the plane. I thought that I would be stuck sitting next to some chatty, smelly jack ass in a polo shirt heading back from an AZ business trip, complaining about the weather and how it spoiled his golf game. This has never happened to me, but it's very easy to imagine it happening to some poor bastard a lot like me. I think that I should spend the night in the airport at least once in my life. Not to save money, but just to build character. Not the Phoenix airport though, for there's far too much chicken here. I can see them now, trotting up and down the terminals, pecking at the ugly, blue faux leather chairs in the gates. I can't hear them, because I think they've learned to be silent to savor the element of surprise. Come up behind some stiff fuck, wired off his ass on coffee and last night's brandy binge and just peck him right on the small of the back. Entertainment.

Fuck Phoenix. It caused me few problems today, but tomorrow my truck could be gone. Stolen by some twisted bastard looking to make some quick cash to score some crystal. Scoring crystal, that should be my goal right now. Fuck this family dribble and work mindset, I need some real, hardcore, up-for-3-days-and-still-punching-holes-in-walls drugs. I need to step off of the plane onto the tarmac, and just walk off into the desert, searching for Carlos Casteneda, or at least my own mind's eye version of him.

What does a final boarding call really mean? How truly final is it? I guess that it's the last boarding call, but it's treated as though they're closing the doors, but that's not really true. They keep that big keycode door to the jetway open while that last sweaty fucker runs through the terminal in a blur of open-mouthed panting and unfocused pupils. Without this drama, our lives would be empty. Travel is what keeps us alive sometimes. Not only the need to explore, but the need to make sudden, abrupt changes.

Behind me, there's an old, white guy with a beard speaking poor Spanish into a cell phone. Everyone is concerned about the weather in Houston. They're having what's called a "ground stop" where no flights arrive or leave (I don't know how this is different from shutting down the airport). Somehow, our flight is going on as scheduled. Too much rain, too much weather, too much clouds, too much bullshit. Sometimes you just wish that you had a hot dog to get through it all with. Some phallic object to communicate with. To share your feelings and most oppressed fears and desires with. Many people have hot dogs, but few really know how to communicate with them.

So I was wrong and the flight is delayed, so I have nothing to do except drink and drive. It's possible that the tornado warning will expire and I'll be able to still arrive tonight.

10:46pm (Bisbee) :: If there's no retaining wall, will the house still stand? Or if there's no house, will the retaining wall still stand? There's no real reason for retainment, I think. We're often too eager to hold on to our past accomplishments, and build these walls out of selfishness, for they so often block out the things which may seem useless to us at first, but are better for our situation in the long run.
What am I talking about? I don't really know. I had a really good drive down here today. The alamos along the San Pedro have definitely turned, and the vividly-blue Arizona sky was only lightly clouded with the chilly winds of the open desert.
I got almost blindly drunk last night but still managed to wake up before 7 and make it downstairs just in time to watch the start of the Tour de Tucson, Tucson's prestigious bike race. I actually saw it three times: once there, once while getting gas, and once while trying to get on the freeway. I ended up having to go all the way down 6th Avenue to get to I-10. Like I said though, it ended up being a very nice drive.
I'm thinking tonight that I should be in some teen soap opera. Not necessarily the lead, or even a main character, maybe just the antagonist in a couple of episodes, or just a guy that enters without warning and leaves just as suddenly and non-chalantly. I think though that most likely, my hair line is too far back to appear as a teen. But whatever. I'll find my fortune and/or fame yet. Whether it be music are taking out a whole herd of racists on some obscure compoud in Cochise County, I somehow think that I'll be known to much of America, and reasonably soon. It's not a dream of stardom, or a desire to become famous, mind you, but rather just a feeling. No emotions. No cracked eggs or spilled milk. No bundles, no joy, no resentment. I have the feeling that, if I get fired, I'm going on a very long trip which will take me into Utah and Nevada. I'm fairly comfortable with my life of cable internet and $10 dinners at The Grill, so I don't really wish for this, although it might be a good break, and we all need one of those. Maybe at 23 I'm just not ready for this settled life, no matter how unsettled it is in reality. I've always kept it in the back of my mind that I would have the wife and kids, but I think that this was just to attract women, and after a few nights of sex, my opinions would change. Now the sex is absent though and I still feel that I don't want that life, so this leads me to believe that this is not only my true desire, but my path.
That's maybe a little too deep for this evening. My computer is making weird fan noises, and I don't know why. It's relatively chilly in this room, especially with the fan on. The bed is comfortable though, and everything feels quiet. This is what's important. Tomorrow is a planned hike, most likely in the Huachucas. Maybe even a shot through the uninhabited wild border lands behind the mountains to find John Wayne, Johnny Depp and maybe even John Laroquette. My feet have gotten too soft. Time to walk on water.

So I'm thinking about it, and I only have about an hour to eat something and enjoy myself at the coffee establishment before I have to leave for my much-anticipated second interview. Not only did they ask me to bring my sexy self, but they also want code that uses a database in some manner. I'm thinking that I'll just get a Viva burrito or something on the way over and smell like onions the rest of the day. Sure it's upsetting, but who can blame me? The first interview went very well. I wasn't nervous at all, and was actually reading the paper when they came in. My would-be boss is a Danish-looking man who doesn't really seem to smile very much, although it may have just been intentional. I don't blame him. People smile too damned much these days. A lot of people say that I do, at least. But who can blame me? Everything is happy and sunny and smiley, like a Sesame Street musical interlude or a Gerschwin tune, or a bouquet of flowers. That's not actually true. There is a rather large cloud hanging over the Catalinas as well as much of the valley. Intimidating? No, promising. It might very well be snowing up there now and here I am in my posch little coffee shop drinking my over-priced Chinese wanna-be tea whist the gnomes of the snow-cast Arizona highlands scurry underneath white blankets of powdery freeze. I can vividly imagine myself amongst them, but have neither the right, nor the time necessary.
Shit, maybe I should have just stayed at the UA and written on this thing. I mean, I only have a few minutes before I want to leave.
Right. Screw HomeSite. This thing has absolutely butchered my code and double-spaced everything.

10:09am :: It's not really difficult to make the most eventful day, I think, especially since so many of our dramatic and dyre moments are, at their root, self-inflicted. It's much better, the general feeling about life that is, today because the poison is all out of my system and my physical self, for the most part, full recovered. Friday night I drank three beers and a bottle of wine, which was sort of a shock to my system as I haven't really consumed that much alcohol in a single night for some time, not since that awful King Cobra/Boone's evening. However, just like that night, I passed out on the couch with no pants, the lights and stereo on (I had tried to listen to Faith No More's "The Real Thing") and the patio door open. I was awoken at 6am by that damned-persistent broken alarm clock and a generally-bad sensation. These are the nights that kill. I wrote the following though, not really understanding it now: "she sits un-abbridged, hanging desperately onto the epilogue." I know that I was listening to the surprisingly-feminist "Evil Empire" by Rage Against the Machine. It may have been the alcohol, but the album that night almost made me cry (actually, I'm certain that it was the alcohol).

Alright, so I've chosen my given path (contradictory statement) and decided to go to Seattle directly from Reno at the ass-end of January and come back roughly a week later with a beard and a better sense of direction (or so I think). The flight from Reno is on sale for $59, and I can get a flight back to Tucson for $95, which makes the whole trip cheaper than I had originally expected it to be. More flying though. Fuck all of this flying. I'm tired of feeling like a bird and I'd much rather feel like a cigarette butt on the road, the kind that was pitched out still lit and with a little of the actual cigarette left but subsequently burned itself out on the asphalt shoulder. That's what's happening: burning myself out. If it's not dim florescent lighting and shallow, friendly greetings, it's these people I always find familiar despite my not knowing them. I know that I did see two people I knew yesterday, both of whom I never became overly-friendly with for reasons that are only known to my sub-concious.

So I'm really pissed off at this point because I had roughly a whole route mapped out for the day of shopping but forgot my drum head, so it is now ruined and I have to go back home. At least I'm not far away, but it's just as frustrating. The city came by last night and put hoods on all of the meters and notes on the windshields of the cars, letting us know that Downtown residents were not welcome to park on the street today to make way for suburban, Downtown visitors visiting the "historic" homes in the area. One of these homes, on Church Avenue, is a blue victorian, always lit up like Christmas (not a Christmas tree, mind you) but is so out of place amongst the dingy alleys and concrete blocks surrounding it that it looks guarded and out of reach, like visiting is only relegated to elitists: the sort that would not be found Downtown otherwise. Downtown Tucson towards the upper-crust, and it's all the better for it. The art galleries along Broadway offer little to none of the "cowboy art" that seeems so popular amongst the migrant population living in the foothillls north of town. There are really restaurants friendly to them, besides maybe El Charro or La Poca Cosa, though these seem isolated in their bubbles as well. The Iron Horse, Barrio Viejo and Saint Mary's neighborhoods are off-limits to them, with the bars on the windows, bums sleeping in the ditches and dark empty streets all around small, decaying houses.
I guess that I shouldn't be bitter towards these people. According to the current reign of American fascism as well as their movie star predecessor, their good fortune should be slowly trickling down on me, and I should patiently waiting with a bucket in hand to collect all of this gold falling from the sky. So if the sky is falling, why am I expected not to worry about it?
That's a little too deep, I'm thinking. Caffeine and the heavy pressure of a full bladder often do that to the mind, I'm thinking...albeit slowly and quietly.

So I started listening to KUAZ last night a little before midnight and they had a very nice set of jazz on, ending with a Louis Armstrong recording from 1930. Exactly at midnight, the announcer came on, gave the station identification, and turned over the BBC, which proceeded to report overly-depressing, Iraq-related news. So many people dead, so many hours until more people would die. No one cares though. Iraqis have become ants emerging from the smoke while the soldiers are the faceless heroes, now footnotes on the evening news who's forbidden to show pictures of their deaths and their returning coffins. This sight is left for their relatives, have only memories and questions for the future of a life that ended quickly and abruptly. These same people were the ones, however, who perpetrated the whole event, who voted for an administration still surviving on the old, racist ideals of their forefathers. There has to be dramatic social change before this country becomes tolerable. I think that it's just a matter of education: show them that what they were taught by their parents is not necessarily truth, and that everything they hear, whether it be from relatives, teachers or the evening news, must be taken subjectively, with a grain of salt. Third-party accounts are inherently biased, and one-sided reporting of the facts mixed with opinions only ends up in worst interest of those listening.

11:02pm :: Or something like that. The dark clouds admonish the resolved, or at least seemingly resolved portions of our lives. I bought a new laptop tonight. $850 before rebate. I also seriously looked at bedding and couches despite the lack of space in my apartment for any of this. Why spend the money? Why not save it? Why not keep a few thousand in the checking account so that I can quit my job and go on a wild rampage of bad beer, cheap salsa and the lousy pictures to prove it? I don't think you need to prove it because no one really cares in the end. You can show your pictures to them, but if there's no one they know, they'll take no real interest in them. It's only interesting to a point to peer in on the lives of others. I'm thinking now that I should take a part-time job at a photo place, not because I need the money, but I'd like to be able to see the various, lousy pictures that people have chosen to represent their lives and memories. Anyway, I want life experience. Enough sitting motionless in a cube in front of a dim, glare-resistant computer screen while others have hours to contemplate their real purpose. Maybe there is no real purpose but to work for just the good of your own self. We're all entitled to bask in some degree of selfishness, but definitely not to the point where it begins to detract from our own humanity. Being human really isn't that big of a deal, it's all about food, sex and sleep, but nothing really past that. Being a person is something different altogether and requires moments of genuine thought and contemplation. I contemplate the rhythms of various turn signals, the unintentional expressions of people that you don't know very well and the dynamics and subleties of a natural environment encompassed by the man-made, or rather encompassing man.
Tonight I remembered that I had parked my truck on the street with the intention of leaving for a guitar shop. By this time, the parking lot had filled up. I watched through the screen for 30 minutes, seeing people come and go but none vacating the spaces in regular, non-reserved section. Somehow, a space at the end vacated under my nose, and I ran downstairs to take it. Tomorrow there will be some sort of festival Downtown. The sort of thing that only old people would be interested in. Home tours, regression to the early 20th century and such. I'll probably go to The Grill and then to guitar stores. I'd like to hike, but I don't know if this can happen with the weather the way it is. I had wanted to again visit Douglas Spring and get lost in the maze of dry grass and yucca plants, but the weekend always seems just filled enough to keep me away from such introspection, but empty enough to make me feel sorry for myself. Maybe it's all for the best, as I can at least get something done, whether productive or otherwise.