On some road to nowhere or another

As he was constructing some sort of taco [watermelon shell; dark, flat celery; fuck ton of butter] and before he had instructed me to the store for orange juice (he asked if I could handle that), my father told me the story of marijuana through the eyes of the Native Americans. "They all did it, though sometimes it was a little scary."

Stopped in my car on some road to nowhere or another I am with a girlfriend, unidentifiable and in the driver's seat, and two friends, unidentifiable and in the rear. Somehow Pepperdog is implicated and it turns out he is dying, his black parts fading quickly to a blizzard white.

It is hard for me to say how or why, but I am at one point searching a Turkish-English dictionary for the morphology of "kadın," which of course becomes "kadınlar," a bunch of other things, and according to this reality, "adının."

*Kadın = woman
*Kadınlar = women
*Adının = name

It should be but isn't a surprise that the stereo in my car works. I suggest we turn the motor on as not to disturb the battery too deeply. What should be and is a surprise is that outside the car, the ground beneath the dirt dust on the ground is frozen solid. "It's tundra," I said as Todd Gill delivered a pizza next door.

Wenn ich nur mehr Zeit hätte...

It was like the sneeches all over again, I swear it, girls in red vests and boys in dark blue, at my neighborhood grocery store back in Fayetteville. There were a couple of cute ones in do-rags, but I was too busy figuring out the cash register to do anything about it. In the back of the store where the produce and florist used to be I sat with a guy about my age and way more white trash who spoke Spanish to me, and too quickly for me to understand. I never reckoned he was actually speaking Spanish. White trash gringo after all.
In the movie theater there were German students in front and back of me, taking up entire rows themselves. I, in the row between, figured out pretty quickly they were German and asked what program they were part of. GAPP, the same as I. I spoke to those behind me about where I lived in Germany, but it turned out he was asking about which bands I'd been in. "Zehlendof" is not an appropriate answer, I discovered. I tried to get a comment in, starting and stopping several times as I realized the speaker hadn't finished, over and over again until finally I got in my two cents - wenn ich nur mehr Zeit hätte...

I haven't done anything...

I didn't seem too shocked to be back in school. Even the elementary configuration wasn't too startling and those old, rickety desks from the years of times tables and spelling contests were less than impressive. Someone resembling Mrs. Lilquist from my Washington Elementary days was presiding and a semblance of Maggie Bates sat somewhere near me. I sat in a desk, enormous chalkboard ahead and vast, blindless windows to my left, as the announcement of an exam came. It was no surprise to my classmates, most of whom I had been oblivious to until the news came, that we would be taking an exam about a Jane Austen novel, which we had had the entire vacation to get to know. I began to worry when I saw the stack of paper placed somewhat neatly atop an empty desk in the center of the room. The exams were alternately neon blue, pink and yellow, and I excused myself from the classroom after confessing to a classmate that I had "not done anything."

I made my way through the distorted streets of Fayetteville near the university.

In what was my bedroom for many years, Sara Miller waited on me as I gathered my things, mostly clothes, for our journey to her house. It was important what I chose to take with me because I was eventually to participate in a boxing match. At Caitlin Briggs' house down the street we discussed whether or not we would walk the couple of blocks up the hill to her mother's house. I was in favor, she opposed because it was raining. My persuasion almost brought her to tears. A few shadowy figures appeared outside of the glass pane, which constituted the entirety of the home's facade. One of them was Chris Byrne and I joyfully called out his name: "Gangster!" He entered the house, gliding in without using any door or breaking any glass. We shook hands the informal way and reveled in the fact that we were seeing each other for the first time in ages. I gleaned the dark corner across the street.

My breath really does smell pretty deathy.

It all started on TV. Mike Conley was playing for some Laker-colored basketball team most of whose members had ridiculous mohawks. Mike didn't though. And he wasn't wearing their jersey either, now that I think of it, so maybe he was on the other team. Way to go, Mike. Beat those stupid haircuts.
The jersey I was wearing was from my first year playing basketball with the Washington Wildcats, one of those reversible bits. I was wearing it with the white side and not the blue side showing. It was so tight that when I decided to take it off I had to get help from my father. I was quite grateful until he told me, at a volume audible to every person near, that my breath smelled horrible. And so I played the angry pout.
I couldn't understand why there were no instructions further than "Write about the Civil War." I couldn't get an explanation from anyone and time was winding down and I couldn't decide just what to write about and WHY CAN'T I BE ASSIGNED A MORE SPECIFIC TOPIC? "Surely I will fail," I thought, mesmerized by the scoreboard.
On our way out, my father and I ran into a rather cheery Yani. She needed a ride and my father more or less ignored her. We were the ones giving her a ride, but she led us to our car, which wasn't quite ours. It was an old Subaru-looking piece. She got in. And so it ended right there, Yani, in the car my father was supposed to drive, and I, standing outside wondering where the car came from, wondering where any of it came from.

Joe Hill, but not the freedom fighter.

I witnessed from the side of the room - in front of a door, I imagine - King of Hill's Dale leading a classroom of youngsters. They couldn't have been older than thirteen. Dale focused on one boy in particular and that boy turned out to be his son. Making an example of his pride and joy, he berated him with questions about Columbus's landing in the "New World" and I got to thinking about the word "discover" and "descubrir." The bell rang - or maybe it was something else that marked the end of the class - and time slowed as my vision zoomed to focus on the boy's face. It was, I think, Joel Booth's little brother. His hair was wind-blown and reminded me of a lion's mane. He was rather regal.

I got a telephone call. It was someone doing an impersonation of Joe Hill: "Meehhhhhh!"

A Moment Pale And Frozen In Time

In that jungle, which is anything but sublunary I follow a family from Italy along that river that leads to either Rome or hell. I am greeted first by Father's penis, a moment pale and frozen in time.

Mother and Father come from different sides of the river which rushes through Rome and shares its name - she from the bank of hardliners, he from the compassionate. This distinction all made sense once we reached the waterfall, a thing nothing if not vast and vertical, as Mother suggested they throw Son - about my age or older - down it as if he were some action figure one lets slip joyful down summertime backyard water slides.

Father refused, though without the anger one might expect. It was never made clear to me just what happened to Son about my age or older.

We made our way through that jungle on that narrow path. All was rainy save the sky, which seemed to have given nothing for quite some time, but remained grey as grey can be. And then at last, just as the path had become most narrow, perhaps too narrow, we reached a cottage, something like a cottage, with small screened-in porch whose coziness I knew all along from the blankets and rocking chairs and overall air of dryness.

But before I could decide that it was there that I should stay, the Italians insisted I take the impressive path which led below, the path vertical just like that waterfall I'd seen before. It was arduous to say the least and murky despite a mostly non-liquid consistency, but the descent flew by (as I remember nothing of it).

Next thing I know I am at the bottom, part of some army preparing itself, ourselves, for some rope course drill, which I handle with ease as it was more like a soft and swinging non-metallic set of monkey bars from youth. The reward for this entire journey is my arrival in the locker room, a sepia place less masculine than I expected.

I have a dark memory of floating at night some satanic river through Rome. The red, judging statue is ablaze and glowing from the inside. The sentiment is mostly blood.

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.