rambling down these Texas highways, and I find myself thinking about Rich Gowen, my long lost pal Rich, whom I dreamed of last night, along with his wife and his gig some art place, where he was hanging out, doing his art.
And wild flowers along the Texas country roads, might make me recall Jefe, the late Chief Broom, or Barry Welch, whom I directed west one year in his quest to snap images of the blue bonnets and other wildflowers that spring up everywhere in central Texas.
And Lucia is really starting to show, and for father's day, I was greeted with a lovely father's day movie, and the last few slides announce Christina Grace Rossi, Coming this Fall.
To be honest, things are quite up and down for me. I go from being so optimistic and happy about the future, to deep bouts of regret. I think about the friends I have that have blown me off in one way shape or form, like Matthew Kahler, and Sean Hennigan. I think about the education I could have had, that I wasted.
I think, now looking back at my life, I would like to have been an academic. Everything interests me, and I love learning and growing and understanding. But now so much of my life is focused either on my job at UPS, which has grown to be quite demanding and in many ways rewarding and validating. What I do there isn't rocket science but at the same time, it's demanding and requires someone who can mutlitask up the wayhoo. But it doesn't give me much of my "prime time" a chance to read and study. Then I drive down those Texas roads, interacting with a cast of characters, digging on the people and trying to be happy.
I come up with all sorts of plans, and am raring to get home and make a little headway, but then by the time I do get home, I am so burned out from working two jobs all day long, that the only thing I want to do, is drink a bloody mary or a screw driver, toast my late mother and watch
The Simpsons (which she hated) at 6:00 and Seinfeld (which she loved) at 6:30 and hopefully pass out between 7 & 8 so I can sleep 5-6 hours before waking shortly after midnight to do it all over again.
And in amazing spells of synchronicity, shows like the Simpsons and songs on the radio mock my self flagellation, and Lucia is quick to remind me how much my kids love me, and how much she loves me and that's what is really important.
And in moments. as the music shuffles through the air from my IPOD to my FM radio, I think about playing music, and singing Dylan and Doors, and playing guitar and grateful dead and doing something here online at cosmicwavesradio.com, or else just buying some portable power and doing songs and shows while standing next to the bubbling brooks and streams in the wild Texas hill country, and just putting out a hat, and saying hell I am a musician, and playing the songs I want to hear ... Desolation Row, Friend of the Devil, The Wheel, Positively Fourth Street.
And some how I think of Lara Rossel, and Nadine Patterson, and James Martin and my brain storms names and forgotten souls, and how we chatted/joked Zimmy in the old Doors Chat.
I might even muse on Hoon, that Dark Doors Arch Conservative, who beats up verbally anybody who disagrees with his ideology.
And Ken Whiteley who really chewed me out the last time I talked to him. Still, his guitar can be heard on the Internet today.
And I might think of Blazing Skye, this long time friend, so supportive and encouraging and a friend by my side, proving that even in cyberspace true friendship can endure. And there's Jane and Dee, and the Tribal Soul Kitchen, a zine we concocted ten years past, and how it's still flying ... And there's Billy Rameriz, the Bee, and styling Bryon and I want to call these cats up and ask them how I rock out on the internet, and the answers are simple enough.. and yet in the back of my mind I still harbor that silly delusion that somehow we can all still make music together, middle-aged, and growing older in the sunset of our own lives, watching as the world we were born into slowly heats up and careens down a course towards god knows where ...
and I wonder if Iran will get the bomb or if Sun Young Kim will lose his mind, and it will all come crashing down and it occurs to me that the only difference beween true apocalypse and say the Asian Tsnuami, is one of scale. That at some point and time, a natural force like an earthquake or supernova, or sunburst, or asteroid, could easily wipe out all 5 billion just as readily and several hundred thousand were swept away in that god awful tsuamni.
And all the while, the Iraq war rages on and I try to understanding how it is that I can be happy and peaceful in a world where some folks are so miserable, so unhappy that violence and self destruction is the only response to the amazing universe they can come up with.
