Crossed a few time zones. Waiting on the baggage, luggage–why so many words for one thing? Siting next to homeland security IT geek. Probably ten years older than me. Got a fancy pocket PC and a ’99 Mustang GT. Nice guy and I will not ask him for a job. But I was talking about customer service and my brain. Or was it something else? Something else. The anger I laid on my sister the other day. She and I didn’t even say proper goodbye. It was caused by my frustration about not being able to achieve anything. I did not let it all out on her because of my lack of success. Oh. What if I were successful? Also. More it was about my inability to comprehend my situation. Sister has everything and more and all she can talk about is what’s her next doctor appointment or shrink visit. I had heard enough of it and blew a fuse. Just like I do with women. On my last day there all she can talk about is an MRI. Should I now be concerned that she’ll have a brain tumor? So I needed these months to have it once again drilled in my head. I am all alone. I am a failed writer but I will keep on keeping on. To nowhere. Rosy as it is. And what of my “family”? I hate them. They are all worth hating. But I love them. And they are not worth loving. Can hate be a term without all the negative? Like this man a few seats away who can’t stop searching for the perfect sleeping position. Can you imagine such a thing? Talk, think of family. Think of those who only care about themselves. Will (my better half) be the only person to appreciate my true want? Of course not. Such a thing is simply asking too much. Of anybody. Heard in my head today that there are simply those who were not meant for their own dreams. Of course I believe it. But I am not giving up. I have now accepted that I will be unsuccessful (in this life). I don’t really know what I expected (when I started on this journey). All I know is that there are people I’ve left behind and they are much better off. That must say something. Something. Trinkets are something. Trinkets aren’t it. Trinkets of guilt. (Paraphrased from Sam Shepard “tokens of guilt”.) So let’s kill a philanthropist. But don’t know one. Don’t have the bravery. Only have something. Only have trinkets. I am confused about their motivations. The voices in my head. Are they smart enough to have some kind of other motivation? My marriage, for example. Or my son. I will never know because my oldest nephew said it best. “We have a really fucked up family.” I should never write a word in these notebooks and I cannot recall doing so about or of my stepfather. Why do my parents disgust me? Not them personally. But the generation. The generation that has ruined everything. Is it because we brought the world to this? A person three seats away from me has a portable DVD player. Next to me the government worker with his pocket PC. The devices/gadgets of entertainment. Oh my, the world is Sandra Bullock. Family. Pain. No hate. The world wants to be like Sandra. Or is America my sister? You know, I thought the whole time I would wear out my welcome with my friend (who put this old middle aged geezer loser up). But. It was my sister. My parents don’t even count. They should move to another place. They picked a horrible place to retire. Fitting for that generation. The generation that made you clean your dinner plate because otherwise the world was starving. What a lie. And their greed. Shall we get into their greed? And now they live in a place where it won’t be pretty in a few years. Decrepit. Weak. Ailing. The forgetting that comes with age is the perfect quilt and comforter for your sins. Old sins are so much better than new sins, eh? Yes. They should wallow while they can. And I should write about the room from last night.
It was a Motel 6 on the outskirts of some distant, close, serene metropolis. Where the workers reside and spit their tobacco. I was shocked as I made the bend of the off-ramp, the highway had a special smell that day. Not the grand smell of victory but that of napalm alone. Lonely napalm. No one to splash and burn onto. I could see the logo of the krapp motel through the trees. My only hope was that it would have been a bit closer to Metropolis. It was obvious that the facility was once an “inn” of whatever brand. It was bought (overtaken) by a corporation. The cost of tearing it down would have been worth it. Built something cheaper in its place. The office was occupied with the same girl I phoned. She was an adorable black girl. She gave me the plastic room card and I drove around to the other side and was surprised to learn there was a pool. It was occupied by poor bastard vacationers–lust like me. But I was afraid to go in the water. I kept thinking of the fungus and infection I would get if I dared take a quick, soothing swim that seemed to do the trick for those kids. I quickly forgot such nonsense. There was work to be done. The room was #140. The door was jammed. Why? Did someone sit on it and deform it, deform its frame? I gave it a kick at the bottom and it swung open. “Cheap room.” The title of my life? An unknown uncles cheap wisdom followed: “you get what you pay for.” Then the smell hit me; I barely broke the threshold. I pulled my stuff into the smell and shut the door. The smell immediately began to grow on me. I started to pick each of them out. The little smells in the air. Like the parts of molecules that I also can pick apart. Two atoms of this, one of those. Eightch two oh, my ass. But there was a TV. The perfection of avoidance. Being drawn away. You gotta see the TV. it was so picturesque and whole … apot … shelving. Part of the room. Part of the everything I was. The bathroom area was fine but by the time I got there the smell of fungus and baby-powder about to turn, yes, baby powder. It was worse than I initially thought. And it was getting worser. Worser. Then I began to feel the moisture trapped everywhere. Human moisture. The sweat. It had all become, from every person ever there, part of the room. The sweat room. The a/c unit was in the lowered ceiling, above the wash area was dripping of moisture. The best part of the room was the shower stall. It was pure plastic and showed no sign of wear & tear from cleaning. But it was clean. Spotless. Plastic. The water nozzle was positioned below the entry way to the stall. So it was like walking into it backwards. Make sense? I got the other bag from my rental. Hung up my suits and changed into running shorts. Stretch, stretch. I had no clue where to run to. Like my travels. Where to? Toward the freeway seemed full of too many cars, and the traffic? Around the corner was a sidewalk that looked like it would lead to a neighborhood. But did I want to go there? Another sidewalk down past the small but overwhelming strip mall. The neighborhood was bad. Wanted nothing to do with it. I could see the poor bastards hanging out with their seventies bottles. Which could be a good sign. I’m of the seventies. Right? Down the freeway I went. There wasn’t much to it. Except the traffic which would slow as the light approached and could feel people staring at the stranger jogging. The sidewalk ended after about one hundred and fifty yards. Bad for my left ankle, an old sport wound that would never heal correctly, to run on uneven ground. Could I afford a twist? I kept jogging along the poor bastard freeway which was starting to turn into a pathway that had been carved out of the wild grass that had never seen or heard a cutting blade. I went for about thirty or so minutes (but could have been ten) and turned around. Not enough free space to run. Can you believe it? Roads and you can’t run on them. (Just askin’.) On the way back ran around a huge, empty bank parking lot four times adding another ten minutes to my run and then headed to the motel. Stop to walk it off and checked out a seven-eleven where I would buy a six-pack. Went to room and showered. I tried desperately to dirty the plastic shower but could get nowhere. Was the room occupied by the cleanest humans ever? They only smelled but carried no dirt. I had also bought a few apples along with the beer. I drank and beer and ate an apple as the shower poured over me. I had it has hot as I could tolerate. To better the moment I jumped soaking out of the shower and turned on the TV. Dripping on the floor I searched for the news. Found a channel and jumped back in the plastic stall. The floor was soaking wet. The strain made me gulp down the beer and then finish the apple. I washed my balls and thought about jerking it a bit. But desire was lost. There was no desire in me. Where had it gone? Jogged across the room to get another can. CNN on TV. Enjoyed the second beer more than the first. Jogged across the room again, this time spilling some beer, and grabbed the TV remote. Then back to the shower with it. Switched to TLC–and wondered what the hell that stood for. Then HBO and a show about a brothel. Would that bring some desire to help me jerk it. If I opened and drank a third beer then I would never be able to jerk it off. That’s when a real women is needed. But this TV program was saucy, steamy. It was soft porn of some sort and I couldn’t help but hear the poor bastard kids out in the pool even more. The TV program talked about whores who loved their work. That seemed to be it. There would be no desire for jerking after that. It was time for another beer. Gulped it down faster than the first two. Thought for a second about leaving the the last two beers for the cleaning help–I hated leaving tips on pillows. But I whipped them down, too. So much for discipline. It helped deal/cope with the stink of the room. Watched a little late night TV and fell asleep without difficulty. Woke at six a.m. Got out of bed at seven a.m. Was checked out, on the road, yearning for coffee (another story) by eight a.m.
For Bela Kaan. Use Flashback. Like Sam Shepard in the Late Henry Moss. is there some Buried Child in there, too? The broken, decrepit American family. Bela Kaan.
The Bela Kaan family. A lawyer is there to settle open issues of Will. Or what seem to be open issues. What the parents (Adam & Eve) have left behind they left to all their children. Which is mankind? The children try to fight this. Then they realize that they never really knew their parents. They certainly never knew they had amassed such a huge fortune. The lawyer has a problem with the docuements in the will because they are thoudands of years old. But there fortune was amassed in a (sinful) last act using their (years) of experience (thousands) they were the single source of investments that ended with the DotCom boom. When they cashed out the boom bust set in.
So many questions AND so many answers with the birth of my son. I know the birth of any chid now. It is amazing mankind has made it this far. (But) I must have written that last line a few times before. A waste of pencil? So who is bad? Who is good?
What complexity will be the solution to (the) future societies? Will it be some kind of politic? A (good) king? Religion? Why not just a bit of sharing. SHARING.
What I was trying to say in my outburst to/about my sister (post 19.07.05). She has so much. She squandered everything and now has nothing to show for it. And with so much opportunity over the last twenty years she still does nothing. When I was there she wouldn’t listen to me or ask me for any advice. How about a story about my leaving the family and while gone for a so many years having forgotten why or at least misplaced the reason why I left returning only to be rudely reminded of (that) why. I just can’t believe it. Sister has everything and nothing. For real. So unhappy but so stuffed full of herself. Krapp.
Participle. Just like writing it. In linquistics a participle is adjective derived from a verb. Present participle. Past participle. Tom will develop first future participle in English language. Or?
Nuff.
-Tommi
worstwriter 