Click images for desktop size: "Dawn" by PixelGirl This week was even worse than I anticipated. Nothing big but after the shots and blood taking Weds my body seems to be in rebellion. Dehydration and the dreaded fatigue.
Thursday I couldn't get out of my chair to answer the phone.
It felt stupid.
I'm lucky I have a puppy who pushes me to play and feed her.
We have become inseparable. Which is not bad except when it takes all my concentration and energy just to raise my hand. She's good about it and tells me her “good” jokes.
What a young dog thinks is funny can take some getting used to.
I've dealt with it before. It signifies nothing. Its worse than the pain that accompanies it. Pain you can control, this fatigue seems to take control away from you.
But I listen to my iPod Shuffle and that makes me smile. I skip over any slow stuff and stay focused on stuff like Alkaline Trio and Eighties B-Line Disaster. Anything with a drive and a snarl that makes my body want to twitch. Rockabilly too. Funniest thing is when I let the music carry me away it always brings me back to California.
I wasn't born in CA, but I was there from when I was 2 weeks old. It always used to feel like home. All the way from Baja - Ensenada, Rosarita Beach, TJ and K37 p through San Diego, San Onofre, Manhattan, Seal Beach and into LA.
Its the place where the surf rules the way of your day. Where you know there is no life east of I5 and every pothole and mud slick of PCH is meaningful and significant to you. Where you surf and dance around the fire rings at Surf City, where your buddy got a cretinous tattoo at the Pike and you were sober and watched him do it.
Into LA itself where dreams are more important than reality because in LA the dreams and the nightmares most often come true. The line between dreams and reality is too thin to discern in the bright sunlight and the cool dark shadows.
Where the guy busing your table on Monday is firing studio Exec's on Friday.
Where the guy manning the gas station sells his first script for 7 figures.
Where you have to be nice to everybody cause anybody could be your boss tomorrow.
And you melded the dreams under the magnificent sunsets of a polluted sky.
Up north to the Valley, where guys like me thought the plastic people lived but a place where second level stars could afford near mansions. And Altadena with the quiet super rich hiding behind bigger walls and security than they ever imagined in Beverly Hills.
Then you get to the Inland Empire, the burning desert where land is almost cheap enough for a guy to be able to live.
Gene Vincent is buried there. I've been to his grave, cleaned up the weeds around his headstone and watched the big trucks roll by on there way to Long Beach and San Pedro, rocking the ground where he's resting.

Click images for desktop size: "Knockout" by Dean Williams A break to be ill.
I closed the door but my puppy has learned to bump on doors to open them. She came in inspected me and then lie on the floor near me and licked my hand.
Its alright now. I don't like her worrying. There's really nothing to worry about. Just the way my life is for now.
I still keep thinking about California. he artichoke fields, the avocado orchards the raisin fields and in the middle of that is Yosemite. I've been all around the world and it is still one of the most beautiful places on earth. Even Bakersfield with the cowboys and herds shelters Sequoia Park. And then the Mojave and death Valley that I crossed on foot, hating every step of the desert cotton fields, but that leads to Palm springs and Taqhitz Rock, Joshua Tree and Needles. Carmel, Big Sur, Napa Somona and the Sierra Madres. Jerry Brown had trade agreements when he was governor, trade agreements with other nations.
I loved California. But not what its become.
I sometime long to be there again and then I remember.

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