writing

I have a story that always starts the same. The words form in my mind,
always in exact order, day after day. “I once loved the most beautiful
woman.” This is how the story begins and ends. As I know in my heart
it shall always end. Each day I stand on a cliff not knowing which way
the winds shall course. Shall they blow me from the edge into an abyss
of violent waves crashing on the jagged edges of the hungry immovable
rocks calling to me from below. Or shall their grip pull me back to
the flowered fields and warm glow of the sunlit gardens of my
cherished dreams. For I know that someday the story will find its
course, and I wait like a shivering child, filled with hope and dread
for the tides of time to run their course. And me, a lone sailor in a
tiny boat tossed about by a violent tempest awaiting on an ever silent
God to calm the seas. Still, the story has only its two possible
endings: I shall either be telling it to my children yet unborn with
you by my side my love, as I see their faces aglow in anticipation of
the most wonderful tale of how we and they found our destiny. Or I
shall be sitting someday in a very dim bar, leaning my leathery elbows
on an ancient and tattered railing, rubbed smooth from countless years
of anguish, telling a tale to another man broken by his own fate, and
forming my parched lips to speak the words, “I want to tell you the
saddest, yet the most beautiful story you’ve ever heard.” Still, the
fact remains, I once loved the most beautiful woman. And always shall.

We had a nice little cold front move through last night. The skies are crystal clear blue and the ocean is calm and it’s in the 70s today. On the edge of the ocean you can see the mirage of ‘the elephants marching.’ Well, that’s what moondog calls it. Must be a nautical thing. It’s actually just a mirage of the thermal inversion that makes it look like giant waves moving from north to south on the horizon. When I was a kid I used to think it was the waves of the Gulf Stream… I would dream that I could ride them to the other side of the equator.

I’m really, really broke. ha. I have enough money to maybe eat this week. But I really don’t mind. Of course it would be nice to have more dough and not worry about it. I will have to keep a few bucks out for a little diversion and a coffee a couple of times a day, my main luxury these days. If things get real bad I can always sell off my remaining guitars. All I really need is the old Kalamazoo. It’s amazing just how much you don’t need. (update: wow! I just found a hundred dollar bill I didn’t know I had! I guess I’ll eat well this week. ha.)

I spent the most wonderful day yesterday with my darling daughter. I’m just so proud of the wonderful person she is becoming. I love her so damn much. Lucky.

I can’t seem to get any tonight. I lay down and start to write poetry in my head. Over and over. It’s pretty damn pointless.

“The most beautiful paintings are those one dreams of while smoking a pipe in one’s bed but which one doesn’t make.”

I keep thinking of Van Gogh. “Lust for Life” has really burned in my putrid little mind. His life of horror and the consuming passion for his art. All of it just makes my own life and everyone (well, almost everyone) I’ve ever known, just seem so utterly insignificant and nearly pointless.

You melted my frozen heart
into an ocean of tears
with no map or compass
only the shrouded stars
of my misty dreams
on the edge of this
impassable and unknown sea…

It’s a very strange night on the beach. From what I can gather, there is a tropical storm brewing off the cost of the Dominican Republic or something. It’s December, and the weather has been very tropical. Squalls off and on and quite a bit of rain running through the beach. I had a really nice night with a great friend. Drinking ‘Awa at the Kava bar down the street with the granola-heads. Playing games with them, making up a different name to introduce myself to everyone in the establishment. I can’t sleep. So I’m looking out the window at the rain on the pavement and listening to the surf. It’s one of those nights I’m so, so glad I’m here. Even though I was so ready earlier to just vanish into the west. Even though I can’t sleep, I’ve got to get up in a couple of hours so moondawg can work on some regulators or something for a dive expedition he’s working on. Earlier we sat on the roof and drank a wonderful Belgium beer and felt the ocean breeze running through my hair. I’m such a lucky man sometimes.

Turkey vultures are riding thermals over the bar and grill next door.
Makes me wonder if they are sensing some sort of carrion or if they’ve
just fixed their attention to tonight’s specials.

I went over to the local music store and bought a couple of sets of
guitar strings. Living on the beach makes the strings go ‘bad’ really,
really fast. I buy kind of an oddball gage of strings and I wasn’t sure
they would have them. But they did! Nice. I really didn’t want to drive
basically to Miami to the Guitar Center for strings. Man, that’s one
thing I miss about living in the city. Having everything within walking
distance or just a quick stop or two on the train. So, I’ll string up
the old Kalamazoo and see if I cant write something tonight. I kind of
feel it coming on a bit. I do need the release of birthing a new song,
even if it sucks. Ha. Besides, I gotta be careful of not spending too much time hanging out downstairs. The bars and beach scene is a little tempting at time. God knows I’m fucked up enough without adding the problem of overindulging or wasting my time trying to make time with some screwy woman (or them waisting their time with some screwy man).

Walking home today I saw an old Jamacian woman brushing her teeth in a styrofoam cup from 7-11 on the sidewalk, the perfect scene after having an overpriced lunch at Neiman Marcus with the blue-hairs and perfectly cropped gay men. “Write about your own time son.” I walked into my apartment only to hear “Crow Jane”

and “The Gift.” Then I heard a story about how an ‘older’ couple I know, one from Venezuala and the other from Spain and how they met in Manhattan. And I know their love for each other is so true. I’ve seen them walk home together night after night together telling each other secrets and sweet words that only lovers can hear. I had to whipe a tear from my eye at the bar and walk outside. It filled my heart with such joy and pain. I love you all… I hate you all. Where is my orion. My arrow, toight. The wind is in from Africa this evening, blowing across the Atlantic. Dylan is singing “The Wedding Song.” Which did he write first, “Dirge” or “Wedding Song?” It’s the same song. All I do is cry, even when I don’t cry. And I can’t even get a good song out of it.

The surf is a little rough today as I peek out the window across the dirty road, but it’s still a gorgeous blue and turquoise. Below me the tourists, locals and homeless shuffle down the alcoves of this last little section of fort lauderdale beach hasn’t become the latest victim of the wrecking ball. Soon. I can see a schooner out on the horizon heading south and east, making way to Anguila or Aruba or some unknown port. Wish I was with them. Maybe. How does or could one just hit the ‘road’ and reinvent themselves today? In a world of credit cards and GPS and surveillance cameras. Woody did it, Jack Kerouac did it, Dylan did it. Gordon Lightfoot realized he couldn’t. After all you can’t hop a jet plane like you can a freight train. Yesterday I didn’t even want to get out of the apartment. Last night the drunks in the bars below pretty much kept me up all night. This morning I crept over to buy toilet paper and coffee. The two essentials of life. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever notices me sitting by the open window watching the waves and the world pass by, writing my way to oblivion all hours of the day. Maybe, maybe not. Who knows what people notice. Right now three men from the city are popping the tops off of a parking meeter. I’ve been listening to a variety of music this morning to try and block out the traffic and garbage trucks and beer delivery rigs. Richard Thompson, Jack Hardy, Patty Griffin. All these endless songs about fuked up lives and lost and broken loves. Sometimes you gotta wonder if all these stories spun have any truth at all. A good spinner can invent anything. Gillian Welch is singing “One and Only.” She’s a very well tuned in thief. God I gotta turn this one up. Slow dance with me baby, just one time….

Last night I had a really crazy dream. I won’t even begin to go into it. It took place in the Keys I think. A beautiful blue and turquoise ocean. But it was so vivid and striking, that it woke me up at about 3am. I woke up just as I was being given some sort of prophecy by angels or some other unearthly beings. It was truly vivid and shocking. Today I got to thinking about the story of how Townes Van Zant wrote “If I Needed You,” a song I just can’t bring myself to ever play again. Anyway, he dreamed the song, and woke up and wrote it. A great story. The vid below goes into greater detail.

Love :noun,verb.
- Two objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time. (Also see motor vehicle accident)

I am ripped and bleeding flesh on a rusty barbed-wire fence. There is no grace, there is no mercy. Only tattered carrion hungry for further decay. How could a heart, once so sweet, so full of tenderness, have become so vile. Corruption you are become my grace. There are no answers, there are no questions. Only riddles of a milky mirror reflecting horror and nothingness. Love, beauty, sincerity, peace, all are brutes longing for revenge and a bloody beating, while our god of justice stands by bound and blindfolded by his own omnipotence. Your empty gaze of compassion and care is but a camera’s lens searching for a nielsen death-grip on tonight’s phantasmagoria of the six o’clock news. The words and names that once were my joy and my prayer have ripened into my horror and endless curse. Wisdom is but the muttering of fools. Tenderness, the wine before the slaughter. Drunken slumber and empty dreams, the only safety and truth in this universe of horror and lies. Your laughter is but a mocking opiate filling you with delusion. I shall not pretend I care and hurt for you, for you would only turn on my kindness, and devour me like a jackal. Love is worse than a four letter word, it’s truth pales to the horror of a cage of ravenous rats bolted on your face, it’s not the only thing, it’s not the best thing, it is nothing. I am no blameless Job searching for God’s deliverance. I am no devil lusting after the throne. I am quartered in an endless death-grip between heaven and hell. I have become nothing. An invisible pedestrian in a slow-motion/high-speed docudrama, while the director bangs the intern in the trailer. Misery has become my god. Hunger my only pleasure. Thirst, my lust. Smoke, my sunlight. Death, my destiny. *** WOW!! That was fun!!. I must do that again sometime. ha.

Isaac Davis: “You know what you are? You’re God’s answer to Job, y’know? You would have ended all argument between them. I mean, He would have pointed to you and said, y’know, ‘I do a lot of terrible things, but I can still make one of these.’ You know? And then Job would have said, ‘Eh. Yeah, well, you win.’”