Albuquerque

Beth and a few others I do not know take me in her car to a sort of office supply store within Fiesta Square in Fayetteville. It turns out we have gone there to feast on Mexican food. The feast is spread out near the front of the store, entrance in view, near the checkout counter. These people I am with explain what all the food is as if I have never eaten something similar, showing me the enchiladas, the cookies, the cake and the different kinds of wine, which jugs in the foyer hold - vino tinto and vino loco. I explain that my Spanish professor, Sergio Villalobos once told us, his class, that white wine is so called because it makes one want to fight.

I ask what kind of meat is in the enchilada in a brown tortilla and covered in a dark green sauce. Beth explains what an enchilada is, and when I clarify that I am interested in the meat only, she says, "Chicken. It's called pollo."

I go up to the front of the store to pay, and a woman who knows my name, and Beth's too, is at the counter to check me out. I don't catch her name, but I think she must know me having been a lunchlady in my elementary school days. I owe three dollars. I start to pull out my debit card, but then realize I may have enough cash to pay that way. It turns out I have two dollars and one Turkish lira. Before anyone even knows this the woman behind me in line says something to the lunchlady about Turkey and I say, "Well what do you know. I have a Turkish bank note here," but they are far less than impressed.

One of Beth's friends is looking for her backpack, asks if I have seen it. I say, "No, I don't know where it is," as I walk towards the dining tables and show her to what she has been seeking.

I exit the store alone and find myself feeling like I am in Austin. Before, I was worried about wearing shorts, thinking I would get too cold (Beth made fun of me for that), but it is comfortably warm outside and other people (it's quite crowded) are wearing shorts and short sleeved shirts too. I weave my way through the crowd towards Beth's car, still all alone. I have to do a kind of dance to make my way there, maneuvering in and out and through people who do not seem interested that I am trying or having to do so. When I make it at last to Beth's car, I think I am the last one to have returned, as the front and back seats are full with me inside, but another friend comes sauntering towards the car and I think "Oh no, I'll be squished," but somehow when he gets in I have avoided such a fate.

I sing to Beth, "Oh no, okay," with the melody of Eliott Smith's "Oh well, okay." Beth asks if I have heard "Albuquerque."

"Is that an album?" I ask.

Slow down and start making sense.

We waited forever for that damned interview. Everybody just had to be at that performance. It was so important to be there. But we weren't there, and maybe they held that against us. I don't know. But I do know that when they finally got around to taking our pictures, my antics were too much for them. They wanted everything to flow a certain way. Nothing should be mixed up, they thought. Well that's just too bad, I thought. When at last the interview started, the questioner spoke so swift I couldn't understand anything. After her first question I paused to give my brain some time to make sense of what she'd asked, but before anything sensible could register she moved on to the next question. I didn't understand that one either, so she moved flustrated on to the next. I didn't understand that one either, so rudely I asked her to slow down and start making sense. She stormed off and in a classroom somewhere away from the festival I consulted a very tan guitar player. He turned out to be Portuguese and I thought I could pronounce his name just fine, but he did not agree.

I am of Arnold

Arnold Schwarzenegger invited us all to his cabin - more like a double-wide trailer - in the woods.

It was rather hill-pretty and green, like that stretch of interstate between Ft. Smith and Fayetteville in April, May, or even June. We tried slaughtering him when he turned into "The Predator," even though he looked nothing like that alien thing we're all used to from the governor-filled films. He came back to life.

We tried again, this time succeeding at least in gashing a perfect circle-hole through his toned abs. Soon the circle was filled through some divine, perhaps satanic, process of mending.

At the University of Arkansas, after wandering the lots where cars cannot park without sticky sticker faculty passes, I found all the students in the university were studying, by obligation, the ins and outs of this Austrian "Predator."

"I don't get it" a journalism major complained. "I'm a journalism major. Why do I have to know about The Predator?"

Back at the trailer a Reed Indeed practice is going on without me, perfect practice for a porch, at the end of which Arnold is particularly strong.

He teaches me the secret of mending and I realize, at last, that I am strong and I am Arnold.

This is clear despite a marked lack of pavilion.

I found out after wondering for some time that Bob Saget gets his mouthwash from Estonia. Also, it turns out that while Estonians speak Estonian, they print all their mouthwash labels in Turkish.

I am on Hendrix campus, which has apparently undergone a total makeover since I last saw it in real life. There is a deep, rectangular hole in the asphalt of the parking lot and it is, for some reason, important. So that is where I park my car.

It looks like Memphis Pencils are playing another show at Hendrix. It is at this point - when I realize I am to perform - that I am back at my parents' house, snorting and licking cocaine off the kitchen wall. The walls were white, don't ask how I found it.

I apologize to my mother for getting blown just as she is leaving. She forgives me, though; she's in a good mood because she and Neil are about to see Frank Zappa.

I'm back into the party atmosphere. It doesn't look like Hendrix. It is probably still Hendrix. The first Hendrix didn't look like Hendrix either. There is a family-renunion/county fair/church picnic sort of thing going on. This is clear despite a marked lack of pavilion. Jesse Belt and I go to the nearby gas station where they return drunk-from beer cans to the shelves. I stock up on watermelon as he is probably buying cigarettes.

There is some boring shit with my family in there somewhere. Where we're going to eat, who's staying at home, whose birthday it is, who's driving which car. There is some really boring shit with my family in there somewhere.

I'm back at the real Hendrix, the real reimagined Hendrix. There is probably a pavilion somewhere. There are some acquaintaces from junior high standing on a sidewalk and I decide not to say hello. Memphis Pencils are about to perform, but alas - I'm in a dermal dilema. My ass is showing. Because my pants are assless.

Don't worry, I've ended up with a towel. Well, shit: it keeps falling down. It keeps falling down and people keep seeing my ass. Shit. Someone asks me about my shirt. I tell them all about how I designed it, but Neil reminds me that it was a gift from JD, that JD had done the design. Oh, right.

More importantly, Jamie Claire approaches me to ask where she should park her car - "Should I park it over in front of that building? I wouldn't want to get an arm on it."

"Oh, Jamie," I think, "I didn't know you were into non sequiturs!" But it turns out a bloody arm, cut at the elbow with hand and all and a Luger next to it, is lying in the perfect fucking parking spot. Now no one can have the perfect parking spot. That is so rude.

Daylight comes and still no police have shown up, but that's okay because the annual Halloween zombie parade is here. We, without knowing who we are, throw rocks at the zombies and say, in all caps, "FUCK ZOMBIES!"

Glorious dolphins result in shitfish monsters.

I am chewing gum in the front pew of a Catholic church next to a couple of Mexican kids who mutter something to me about a sandwich. A nun chides me for the gum, but when I take it out, most of it sticks to my back teeth. Some high school aged kids then performed "Bored By Beacons," a Memphis Pencils song.

Neil comes home. His chin is bloodied and I don't find out why, just that he thought he was going to get "stitched up," but actually got "stitched." That fucking nurse. Neil spits his tooth into the sink and I extract my own by hand, the one to which the earlier gum was stuck. The tooth is so unhealthy that it is translucent, practically falling apart, and it expands until it is the size of that big-ass diamond in "The Rescuers."

There is a story going around that some young black guy was caught doing something naughty - but not so terrible by liberal standards - and that he was going to get a very harsh sentence in a couple of weeks. I think he was expecting up to ten years for a DUI. He was charged for that after doing something lewd or especially negroid at a party. Some friends and I are walking on Dickson St at the intersection with Arkansas Ave, discussing the travesty when a couple of female police officers begin chiding us about how hard their jobs are. We agree, but that wasn't really the point, ladies.

Ayşenur nags me about something, about which something or other I should choose. We are at a picnic.

I am in an Amazon-like river and what appear to be glorious dolphins end up being shitfish monsters, like in that campy horror movie.

An irrelevant speck of dust grows to a size which overwhelms the universe.

A guy from Indiana about my age whom I have never met runs into me at Wal-Mart. We are looking at books. He recognizes me from the internet and says, "Oh, I saw you recently read such and such novel. How'd you like it?" to which I respond "I didn't think anyone read the stuff I put on the internet."

I Got Life

I was performing "Ain't Got No...I've Got Life" with an older, double-chinned Nina Simone in a basement-grey venue that was something like The Music Hall. Zach Ash was at center stage playing my Yamaha keyboard, and during the applause in between the first song and "Happy Birthday, Harvey" I noticed the levels on a soundboard, which were both very low and very high frequencies. Because of this and Nina's mid-song mood swings I said "It feels kind of bipolar up here." Zach gave me a worried look, and we started the next song.

italic dreams - i've forgotten my etruscan

Yani told me I should get toilet paper from Sumner because he had a whole lot of it. Andrew told me not to sing like that.

(I would start putting dreams in italics, but it seems I've forgotten my Etruscan!).

Sincerely,

MONG DYNASTY