Making Widows Wince

Slef Stripped of self The connection to others Is the touch of god. David eats old hamburgers the day after, Still drunk and happy, He looks to me and says, “All I can taste is cold with pickles.” Tommy lives to skate and fight And live he does, In a bruised and battered Blur of every night. Kirk barbecues at 4 a.m. in dark. He eats nothing but chicken. He cranks the sound and self to twelve And dances alone with his cats. Michael works the nights at a hospital, Both nurse and addict He tells the ill the pain will stop, But it won’t. And stripped of self The connection to others Is the touch of god. Mike Brady 2010/17

1. The cop that stopped me in Barstow needs more color. He was big in a fat kind of way, ugly with a steroidal acne blush, and scary on a Steven King travels through Nevada while dreaming of lepers tripfest. I kept thinking he wanted to pull me out of the car window in pieces, if needed. If I were a woman, I would have dialed 911 before rolling the window down. 2. Route 66 from the Bagdad Café to Golf across the desert is unrideable – the max speed is 40mph, and it’s a rough ride at that. It has obviously not had maintenance in the last 30 years. On the other hand, and meth lab, barring transportation problems, might find a nice home in the Mohave – and maybe you should think about that late at night while driving alone (see #1.) 3. As a child, I had three-year relationships with people (Army brat.) I’ve learned to keep the magic going as a n adult, with difficulty, but am learning that it’s sometimes more about my fear of being found out than it is timing and readjustmen

After wandering the desert for a few days, I’ ve made it back in one piece, tired but unchanged in spirit. Wherever I go, I find myself alone in a place, and when I return to where I started, I find I’m back to the same place, with me. No gestalt, or awareness – and a change that will only be seen in time – or not. Left Tonopah early and had a nice, non-stop drive up and around highway 95 (Nevada just has two roads going different directions with the name of 95 – it calls the one I’m on ‘Alt 95’.) I has been wonder getting off the freeway and taking 2 lane roads on this trip – most of my time is spent alone – if I get too near another car, I just pass them or slow down – usually I pass them. I don't like people in front of me when I'm driving -- it takes too much attention. People are unlike the road -- they can act stupid and surprising, even to themselves. The road gives notice that doesn't take a psychologist to figure out, and it can be guarded against surprise with

At the crack of 5, I chose to sleep until 7. Kingman to Seligman, with a stop at the Grand Canyon Caverns, was a smooth, magic glide of a trip. Even Hackberry’ ruins looked clean in the bleach of the morning sun. I was the only one at the Caverns, usually a meeting ground for elderly Germans, and just sat in the sun for a bit – then headed to Seligman. I’ve never seen it look better – painted, prosperous and unchanged. At the hotel right outside of downtown – where I spent a week as a child waiting for my mom to get the station wagon fixed – a new manager had redone the place. He said that, ‘the old ladies son had ran it into the ground’ until he took over. I estimated the room number when he asked me (memory only remembers magical thoughts,) and he opened it up for me – looked plain, but sort of like I thought it should. A nice guy with a clean motel – sans pool – which queers it a bit. I took pictures and told him I’d pass on the place to others. Ate at place, ‘Westside Lilo’s Café.’

I am not that good at letting people know what’s going on with me – never have been; doubt I’ll change. So – this is an update to all who read this, maybe not the stuff in my head that makes it smoke on cold days, but the where, and a few facts – hopefully illustrated with marginal pictures. Fired on Friday last – for being me – the best me possible under extended exposure and grinding. Signed up for the State tit on Saturday, and on the road today. Left early and zipped through San Jose. Stopped at Harris Ranch, off Highway Five, a couple of hours later – just in and out with Tri-tip. Noticed the Hollister cut-off on 152 had been finished – good work state. Thought for the morning – “They torture wine to make it better – why not people” (Well... because they are people.) Cut over to 99 at the Lost Hills exit and managed to drive straight through to Boron. Boron is a place that I’ve passed over the years on the Freeway—it always looked like a residential, planned community o

Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended  by Edna St. Vincent Millay Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done. Yours is a face of which I can forget The color and the features, every one, The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; But in your day this moment is the sun Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." — Groucho Marx "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." — Anaïs Nin "I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." — Ayn Rand "And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." — Sylvia Plath "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." — C.S. Lewis "Kiss me and you'll know how important I am." — Sylvia Plath The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a though

"Physicists in California have made the smallest ever incandescent lamp using a carbon nanotube as the filament. The nanotube is so small it behaves as a quantum mechanical system but it's just large enough that the classical physics rules of thermodynamics should apply. Analyzing the light emitted from the tiny light will give the team a better picture of what happens in the twilight zone between the quantum and classical worlds." And the best three response to this article are as follows: 1. How many quantum physicists does it take to change a light bulb ? Three. Two to do it, and one to renormalise the wave function. 2. You Fool! You altered the outcome by observing it! 3. I just replaced all the lamps in my house with these, but they just don't seem to brighten up the room like the old ones, and now my cat is missing. I love physics humor -- tight but bouncy.